Planck Visualization project:

1. Planck Visualization project: Immersive and Interactive Software for Astronomy and Cosmology Education Jatila van der Veen 1 Ryan McGee 1 John Moreland 2 1: University of California Santa Barbara 2: Purdue University Calumet

2. this research is supported by the Planck Mission and the nasa office of education Looking Back to the Dawn of Time

3. Outline of this talk: Arguments in favor of using games & simulations in STEM education Brief explanation of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Brief description of the Planck Mission Description & Demo of our simulations Plans for implementation Where you can download our materials

4. Enable learners to see and interact with natural phenomena that would be impossible to observe directly (US National Research Council, 2011) Facilitate discovery learning Provide strong sense of engagement with science content Promote important aspects of learning from the affective and motivational domains Why use games and simulations in STEM education:

5. Six Learnings framework for VR: Learning by exploring Learning by collaborating Learning by being Learning by building Learning by championing Learning by expressing Lim, K. 2009, Jour. Vir. Worlds Res., 2(1)

6. Planck Visualization project Interactive Mission Simulation: Teaching about Planck and solar system astronomy in VR Visualization and Sonification of the CMB: Using Media Arts Technology to teach about the physics of the early universe using the analogy of the physics or sound

7. Brief explanation of the CMB Looking out in space = Looking back in time

8. Brief description of the Planck Mission Launched May 14, 2009 from French Guiana by Arianne V rocket Orbit around L2, 1.5 million km from Earth Cooled to within 1 tenth of a degree above absolute zero Designed to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) with a sensitivity of a few millionths of a degree Kelvin, and an angular resolution as fine as 5 arc minutes on the sky, in 9 frequencies. Goals: extract essentially all the information contained in the CMB temperature anisotropies, with which to constrain models of how the universe originated and evolved map the polarization of the CMB in both intensity & direction map the foreground sources in greatest detail and coverage so as to understand how the CMB photons interact with the foreground sources as well as remove them accurately from the CMB maps

9. Planck Mission in Virtual Reality (PMVR)

10. Originally developed in the Center for Immersive Visualization and Simulations at Purdue University Calumet Runs in Windows and Linux Works with PCs in 2D and 5 3D formats

11. The PMVR embodies the characteristics of a successful VR environment (Zeltzer, 1992): Autonomy : The mission and the planets behave independently of the user; Interaction : The simulation responds consistently to the user’s input regarding navigation, scale of the display, and passage of time; Presence : The user gets a sense of being ‘inside’ the Solar System, even in the 2D mode on a PC.

12. PMVR supports learning objectives for introductory astronomy and cosmology component of “Astro 101” • Kepler’s Laws • Earth-Moon interactions • Distances, relative sizes, • & relative motion in the • Solar System • Provides ‘back story’ of a • live mission above: Visible light view of the galaxy right: Microwave view of the galaxy

13. Targets of Opportunity: Jupiter-Venus-Mercury line up in the winter sky, 2012

14. PMVR Demo #1

15. PMVR: A Look Inside Planck

16. PMVR: Applications with students As guided ‘tour’ in an immersive theater by instructor As independent exploration by students on a PC or in a lab with individual HMD’s Couple with real-world field observations As an assessment tool, in that students can record demos 5. Plans for testing with students in the PUC VisLab in Fall 2012 6. Planks for testing with Astro 1 students at UCSB

17. Plans for next year: putting the PMVR into IVR Imagine a multi-user simulation that runs in 3D with Kinect 360, in which students can learn astronomy by exploring!

18. Visualization and Sonification of the Cosmic Microwave Background PI: van der Veen; Collaborators: Lubin, Kuchera-Morin; Ryan McGee, Basak Alper, R.J. Duran, PhD students in Media Arts Technology at UCSB

19. The CMB visualization and sonification were originally developed in the AlloSphere research laboratory at UCSB, directed by Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin.

20. Sonification the transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal for the purposes of facilitating communication or interpretation. numerical data  Why sonification is appropriate for understanding the CMB: Because the very early universe was an expanding plasma that was permeated by gravity-driven pressure waves – i.e., SOUND.

21. As we understand today, for the first 380,000 years of its existence the young expanding universe was filled with a plasma of tightly coupled photons and charged particles. Dark matter, which does not interact electromagnetically, collected first in pockets, and is believed to have initiated the growth of acoustic waves in the photon-baryon fluid. Left: Animation of stones dropping into pond analogy with dark matter initiating acoustic waves (WMAP). Below: 1D schematic of fundamental and higher harmonics (W.Hu).

22. Just as the power spectrum of the tones produced by a musical instrument is determined by the characteristic properties of that instrument, similarly the angular power spectrum of the CMB is controlled by the properties of the universe, characterized by ~30 cosmological parameters.

23. Mapping angular wave number on the sky to audible frequency: • Distance the longest wave could have crossed at recombination = • vt= ( .6c) (380,000 years) • = 2 x 1021 meters, or ~ 228,000 light years = half a wavelength • Fundamental wavelength was 456,000 light years, which corresponds to a frequency of • 7 x 10-14 Hz, or slightly more than 49 octaves below the lowest note on the piano (27 Hz). 1o ~ l = 200 200 Hz Go down 49 more octaves !!

24. Exploring the CMB in Sound Space sound: zooming in on the harmonics, one at a time, using narrow peak width As the user slides between model universes, the power spectrum, map, and sounds change. With the audio controls, you can change the timbre, and zoom in on one or more harmonic.

25. Students can compare the look and sound of different model universes. 70% dark energy – best estimate 89% dark energy – too much 10% dark energy – too little lambda = .89 baryon = .05 dark matter = .05

26. Curricula which support utilizing our CMB simulation in Astro 101 classes: Cosmology Curricular Companion (B. Partridge) Labs for a Lambda-Dominated Universe (J. van der Veen & P. Lubin) http://planck.caltech.edu/epo/epo-higherEdu.html

27. Download our simulations http://planck.caltech.edu/epo/epo-informalEdu.html