The Joy of Ex-perimental Astrophysics with UCSB Professor Ben Mazin (#172)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2021

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Benjamin Mazin is the Worster Chair in Experimental Physics at UC Santa Barbara. He attended Yale University, graduating in 1997. He then attended the California Institute of Technology, graduating with a doctorate in Astrophysics in August, 2004. After a short post-doc at Caltech, he went to work as a scientist at JPL in March, 2005. He joined the faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara in September, 2008, where he leads a lab dedicated to the development of optical/UV/X-ray Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) and astronomical instrumentation for time and energy resolved studies. His current research focus is building and using MKID-based instruments for detecting and characterizing nearby exoplanets. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2010, and the Worster Chair in Experimental Physics in 2017.Ben Mazin, is a part of the Department of Physics at UCSB. We are focused on using a unique detector technology called Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) for astronomy in the near infrared, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray. MKIDs allow us to determine the energy and arrival time of individual photons without read noise or dark current. The applications of this technology spans a wide range of vital research areas, including detecting Earth-like planets around nearby stars, untangling the emission mechanisms of pulsars, determining the redshift of billions of galaxies, and detecting dark matter. https://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~bmazin/index.html Thanks to our sponsors! biOptimizers for better sleep https://magbreakthrough.com/impossible http://betterhelp.com/impossible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
0:07.0	Welcome everybody to a special summertime edition of the Into the Impossible
0:11.7	Podcast. I'm your fearful host Dr Brian Keating,
0:15.4	Chancellor's Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, and I'm joined by another
0:19.2	distinguished professor from the University of California, Professor Ben Mazine.
0:23.6	I don't think I'm a distinguished professor.
0:25.6	I am the Worcester chair of experimental physics though.
0:28.6	And Ben is in town for a super secret reason that we can't talk about.
0:33.0	Jason, but we will.
0:34.7	Maybe we will.
0:35.7	We'll talk a little bit about that, but I want to expose you to the world of experimental
0:39.6	physics, because we don't get enough of that on the end of the impossible
0:42.4	podcast. Because my friend. because we don't get enough of that on the end of the impossible podcast
0:43.0	because my friends some of my best friends are theorists Ben I'll forgive you but they
0:50.4	write these wonderful books and very few experimentalists write these books and because of that we have a bias
0:56.2	Unintentional as it is towards our brainiac friends including Sarah Seager who is recently in town visiting as well. Now I want to make the point that there are many branches of physics.
1:09.0	There's not only astrophysics, although that's what Ben and I happen to do or specialize in, but within astrophysics,
1:14.6	I claim there's no more diverse type of physics that you could do.
1:19.0	Because you have to do everything, right, though?
1:20.9	Yeah, I think an astrophysics, really, it is the mother science. You have, all science happens in the universe, right? Therefore it's astrophysics. So I do think it is the mother science.
1:32.0	And we were talking over lunch about this notion that, you know, kind of the prevailing way that people think about astrophysics is, oh, it just depends on things that are out there but with the
1:44.3	exception of biophysics although now we're getting into astrobiology maybe that
	...

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