The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) holds generall assemblies (also called COSPAR) every other year. For most of my career, COSPAR has been held in Europe or Asia. Since I already travel every other year to the International Cosmic Ray Conference (skipping only two or three times since I started), and since I’m generally not fond of long plane flights, I’ve never attended COSPAR.
Until this year, when COSPAR is being held in Pasadena. Since it’s being held so close to my house, and since my work in SuperTIGER needs to be pushed along, I agreed a few months back to submit an abstract and present my work at COSPAR. It would be churlish of me not to attend.
So, I’ve been attending COSPAR all week, at the Pasadena Convention Center. The subject material is much broader than at the ICRC, with twelve scientific (space and astrophysics) divisions or tracks, ranging from Space Studies of the Earth’s surface, meteorology and climate, to Space Plasmas in the Solar System, to Research in Astrophysics from Space, to Life Sciences as Related to Space, to Material Sicneces in Space, to Fundamnetal Physics in Space, to Latest Results, to Panels, to Special subjects, and to Interdisciplinary Lectures. In comparison, the ICRC 3 or 4 a few years ago — origins and galactic (cosmic rays), solar and heliospheric, high energy astrophysics, and neutrinos — but recently the number has grown slightly as the bigger categories got separate subdivisions.
The upshot is that there were so many topics discussed that I couldn’t possibly see or even find out about everything that might interest me, and I often found out that I missed a talk that I would have liked to have attended. The iPhone app was helpful, but it wasn’t perfect. Oh, well.
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I did give my talk on Friday titled "Galactic Cosmic Ray Energy Spectra for Heavy Elements (Neon to Zinc) from ~0.8 to ~10 GeV/nuc and a Search for Microquasar Spectral Features with the SuperTIGER Instrument”. I had spent all last weekend updating for this meeting a previous PowerPoint I had provided to a colleague for another conference, and I spent additional time Wednesday night and Thursday refining it and practicing the delivery.
When I gave the presentation Friday at 11:55 AM, my delivery was pretty much on point, and I finished on time and had time for one question. The question was the one I feared, about the scatter of my data points exceeding the statistical uncertainties, but since I had been thinking about that very question all week, I was able to give a full (if not final) answer to the question. Basically, I made it very clear that I was aware of the problem and knew the process to ameliorate it (though it would take a lot of upcoming work — mostly to obtain the systematic uncertainties (very difficult), but also to optimize the energy binning and time binning (likely by widening both)). Afterward, on the way back to my seat, I fielded another, whispered question from a theorist (I assume) who was sitting nearby.
The two things I don’t want after an oral presentation are no questions — meaning my talk was boring or nobody was interested — and questions I can’t answer. Since I got questions I could answer, I was pretty satisfied.
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On Tuesday, C, a high school student I’ve been mentoring (no, not the one who’s going to UCLA) at Caltech passed by the convention center on Tuesday night and, knowing that I was at COSPAR, found some delegates and asked them some questions. He became interested and asked me via e-mail if there was any way he could get in — specifically to get in free, since student registration cost $275 onsite. I told him no (not for free), and I also told him I expect student admission was for undergrads or grad students. I also indicated I didn’t think it would be worth the expense for him, since the talks are very technical, and I didn’t see any minors at the conference except very, very young children of delegates. I suggested he attend the one public lecture instead, on Wednesday night.
He said he’d do that and then, on the basis of the lecture, decide whether he wanted to try to attend the rest of the week. At that point, I told him that if spending $275 was a real possibility, then he may as well register on Wednesday morning so he could also attend talks during the day, rather than miss something on Wednesday that he might be interested in.
So, he did so on Wednesday morning, and he got in.
W, who has been spinning his wheels and reading Game of Thrones at home since he finished a summer tech camp counselor-in-training stint, found out about C attending COSPAR, so I agreed to register him as well. When he arrived, we registered him as an accompanying person for $275, but then we changed it a little while later to student registration, which costs the same. The difference is that students count as regular delegates and can attend the sessions, while accompanying persons aren’t supposed to (though nobody stopped him from entering sessions when his badge read Accompanying Person). We just changed it to dot the i’s.
I invited W and C to attend some talks with me given by colleagues from Caltech (e.g. Ed Stone, and Jamie), but I also told them they should attend other sessions more in line with their personal interests. W later indicated he felt the cosmic ray and solar and heliospheric talks were “over his head”, and I told him I thought he might find the planetary talks more interesting. I figured C might like Cubesat talks (and W might, too).
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W also attended my talk, and while he said it was over his head, he seemed to think it was well delivered.
We had lunch at a nearby American Bistro, and I had the fried chicken and doughnuts for lunch. With my late nights working (powered by Cokes and late night snacks of doughnuts as well), COSPAR has been hell on my diet