Week 9: Welcome to [the Beginning of the End]❌ [My Head]✔

I invite you to live in my head for the duration of this blog. With that, welcome to this week’s edition of Tanvi’s 15 hours of tedious labor! 

I’m pleased to say that the week started with writing a simple text message (imagine the notification audio in your head please… ding!). It was from me (you?!) to a trustworthy junior. A capable junior. An incredibly busy junior who is interested in the biology of living systems, not the atmospheric composition of exoplanets. But that’s okay! I have organized a writeup to discuss with her to aid her in presenting my poster 🗣🔥. And no, there are no sneak-peeks for you lodged in my brain as they have been redacted. I encourage you to visit my stand in-person at the symposium to view my poster 🤓. My representative is a lovely individual. I assure you she doesn’t bite.

Then, as per my onsite advisor’s suggestion, I began the image concoction process for the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. Why ProxCenb? Many reasons. For one, it is a super-Earth, indicating possible habitability. Secondly, it orbits the star Proxima Centauri, which happens to be the closest star to the sun at about four lightyears away. Hopefully in a few years, as scientists and engineers develop methods to directly image exoplanets with telescopes like HabEx and Gaia, we will be able to compare my upcoming ProxCenb simulation with the directly imaged model! Third and most importantly, ProxCenb is a great choice because it is a non-transiting exoplanet. This means that from the observation point of Earth, the planet does not pass in front of its star.

But how do we observe and image these non-transiting planets? This is one of the big questions the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration, which I am proud to be a part of, seeks to address in upcoming research. Big thank you to my onsite advisors for the plug! 

So to get started with ProxCenb, I found a really interesting paper that I have linked below that references another paper (phew!) that links the data for an LMD GCM, a different style of GCM than ROCKE-3D GCMs. This makes it non-ideal to work with, as I’d have to grasp a new format of information within this GCM to process for the simulation steps. I’m looking forward to it:)

Knock knock! Who’s ther-INTERRUPTING PSA alarms reminding me to begin writing my research paper! Okay. After refining my wording, the abstract and introduction are complete. Next week, I’ll have to elaborate on the methodology and results sections. Maybe I will get published. Who knows.

We senior project folk are approaching the date of the symposium at an alarming rate (it’s May already??). In the words of BIF’s lovely senior project coordinator, Ms. Nagpal, there are many questions to address in our grand presentations. A deceptively simple 10-minute discussion of our challenge-riddled progression that led to the final result of each of our projects. So… How do I condense a three-minute-long about-me into a 30-second one? How do I balance formal and technical vocabulary with apt explanations to help my audience understand the significance of my work? And the most challenging question of all… What have I learned about myself over the course of this project? 

I’m sure these answers will come to me at some point. Hopefully before Monday, my first presentation practice session. 

Now if you would kindly exit my head, or pay rent until next week. The final blog. I am going broke. Anythin helpz 😐.

Tanvi 👽