Free Live NSN Webinar Series: An Overview of the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics - Livestream

Every decade, the National Academy of Sciences, at the request of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy, and NASA, undertakes a survey of astronomy and astrophysics. The purpose of the survey is to identify the most exciting science questions for the coming decade and to prioritize which telescopes the federal government should invest in to best address those questions. Previous decadal surveys have recommended and ultimately led to some of your favorite national telescopes: e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very Large Array.

A second goal of the survey is to assess the state of the profession, e.g., the diversity of the field, the balance of funding across large and small projects, and other related topics. In this talk I will describe the decadal survey process and the major recommendations of the 2020 Decadal Survey. The scientific opportunities in the coming decade are tremendously exciting and cover topics ranging from the search for life on other planets to studies of collisions of black holes and neutron stars with both gravitational waves and light. The project recommendations made by the 2020 Decadal survey are likely to shape the major astronomical projects that NSF and NASA undertake in the coming decades.

Speaker: Dr. Eliot Quataert, Princeton University

Watch the lecture here.