Publisher’s version / Version de l'éditeur:
Skygazing: Astronomy through the seasons, 2018-12-04
READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THIS WEBSITE. https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/copyright
Vous avez des questions? Nous pouvons vous aider. Pour communiquer directement avec un auteur, consultez la
première page de la revue dans laquelle son article a été publié afin de trouver ses coordonnées. Si vous n’arrivez pas à les repérer, communiquez avec nous à PublicationsArchive-ArchivesPublications@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca.
Questions? Contact the NRC Publications Archive team at
PublicationsArchive-ArchivesPublications@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. If you wish to email the authors directly, please see the first page of the publication for their contact information.
NRC Publications Archive
Archives des publications du CNRC
This publication could be one of several versions: author’s original, accepted manuscript or the publisher’s version. / La version de cette publication peut être l’une des suivantes : la version prépublication de l’auteur, la version acceptée du manuscrit ou la version de l’éditeur.
For the publisher’s version, please access the DOI link below./ Pour consulter la version de l’éditeur, utilisez le lien DOI ci-dessous.
https://doi.org/10.4224/23004790
Access and use of this website and the material on it are subject to the Terms and Conditions set forth at
VR astronomy
Tapping, Ken
https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/droits
L’accès à ce site Web et l’utilisation de son contenu sont assujettis aux conditions présentées dans le site LISEZ CES CONDITIONS ATTENTIVEMENT AVANT D’UTILISER CE SITE WEB.
NRC Publications Record / Notice d'Archives des publications de CNRC:
https://nrc-publications.canada.ca/eng/view/object/?id=438bfabe-ffda-4fd9-b938-4c92f6a23475 https://publications-cnrc.canada.ca/fra/voir/objet/?id=438bfabe-ffda-4fd9-b938-4c92f6a23475
VR ASTRONOMY
Ken Tapping, 4thDecember, 2018
Virtual reality (VR) is radically changing the way we do science. For example, this is an experience I had at a recent solar conference. I put on the headset, and instantly I found myself hanging above the surface of the Sun. In front of me was a great loop, with its footpoints anchored to the surface and extending up into space far above my head. It was hundreds of times bigger than the Earth and still growing. A close look showed it to be made of loosely braided fibres, moving and stretching as the loop grew, getting higher and higher. Suddenly, some fibres snapped, releasing flashes of energy. The snapping rapidly spread, until the loop had completely broken loose from its moorings and the released stress catapulted most of the loop into space at thousands of kilometres a second. Of course, if I were actually transported this close to the Sun, I would have been destroyed before I even knew I was there. I was watching a virtual reality computer animation showing a theory explaining how coronal mass ejections are
launched. These things can have devastating effects on our communications, power and transportation infrastructure. On a different occasion, I put on the headset and I was inside a molecule of DNA. I watched the double helix separate into two single helices, and then the various bases arrange themselves into two double helices of DNA. Both of these are examples of the growing use of virtual reality technology in science. A major part of scientific research is plotting
graphs. We use them to show how things change with time, or how two or three different processes might be related. Graphs continue to be important tools in our work. However they have a powerful limitation. In nature, most phenomena are actually driven by many relationships. Over the last ten or twenty years we have learned that these individual relationships might be simple, but when we
combine many of them, the result can be extremely complicated. A good example is a collision between a pair of galaxies. The whole thing is driven by one force: gravity, but what
actually happens is amazingly complicated. The best way to see how well our simulations or models compare with what we see happening out in space is to use virtual reality. You can “sit there in space”, with a million years or so passing a second, being able to look around at all the different things that are going on. Since these collisions take millions of years, we cannot
observe the whole process, but fortunately we are finding lots of galactic collisions out there, all at various stages.
Now we are seeing a new application of virtual reality technology. Just as a pilot can fly a drone half a world away from where he or she is sitting, we can now sit in a “virtual control room” enjoying almost the whole experience of being at the telescope. We can adjust instruments, look at the data as it comes in, and overlook everything else going on at the telescope. This offers the great advantage that our observations can be scheduled when conditions are best for making them, rather than fixing them to the time we manage to get flights. It saves a lot of money and time too. Modern astronomical instruments, like the CHIME radio telescope at our observatory, or even more so, the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, which is an international project in which Canada is participating, produce a tsunami of data. How do we get to grips with this flood of data? Looking at printouts and plotting graphs definitely won’t work. The two tools that will be crucially important are virtual reality techniques for taking an overall look at the data, and the assistance of artificial
intelligence systems to help us find what we are looking for, or more importantly, to discover the unusual needles hiding in that huge haystack. Saturn is getting lost in the sunset glow. Mars lies low in the south and Venus low in southeast before dawn. The Moon be New on the 7th.
Ken Tapping is an astronomer with the National Research Council's Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, Penticton, BC, V2A 6J9.
Tel (250) 497-2300, Fax (250) 497-2355 E-mail: ken.tapping@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
