USC Dornsife Magazine Fall 21 / Winter 22

F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S O F U S C D A N A A N D D AV I D D O R N S I F E C O L L E G E O F L E T T E R S , A R T S A N D S C I E N C E S

MAGAZINE

FALL 2021 / WINTER 2022

The Cosmos Issue

OUT OF THIS WORLD

USC Dornsife scholars explore the mysteries of the universe.

Stars in Their Eyes

USC Dornsife faculty reflect on how the cosmos inspires them.

“The moon is my connection to the night sky and the cosmos: It provides a sense of awe, even in Los Angeles (where there often isn’t much else clearly visible). Following the moon’s waxing and waning makes me think not only of the lunar calendar — followed by Jews and Muslims — but of a different way to order time. The slim beauty of a crescent moon promises a new month, and the possibility of a new beginning.”

JESSICA MARGLIN, Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and associate professor of religion, law and history

“Two hundred billion trillion stars in the universe; 12 billion neurons in my body — and these are all mere parts of the incomprehensibly vast cosmos.

We look to the stars, and wonder, and craft stories tying our lives in with the heavens. Myths give us a place in the cosmos, and I find myth-making truly a thing of wonder: the cosmos contemplating itself.”

TOK THOMPSON, professor (teaching) of anthropology

“I’m inspired by the vastness of the universe and everything we still have to learn: every star seen and unseen represents a possibility, a home for life unknown, and perhaps an adventure into the culture and art of another civilization. I hope that we will make contact within my lifetime, that we will once and for all answer ‘are we alone?’ with a resounding ‘no!’ ” VAHÉ PEROOMIAN, professor (teaching) of physics and astronomy

NICHOLAS WARNER, professor of physics and astronomy and mathematics

LUCAS HERCHENROEDER, associate professor (teaching) of classics

IMAGES: ISTOCK

“I am inspired by the beauty and complexity of everything in the universe, and the fact that we can understand it through science, without invoking magic or the supernatural. The counterpoint to the small, ephemeral existence of humanity in such a vast cosmos is to know that our time is precious beyond measure, and our understanding of each other, the natural world, and of the universe itself is ultimately all that matters.”

“Literature has for me always provided a touchstone for making sense of the impossibly vast. Powerful examples from classical Greece and Rome abound — Sappho’s introspective verses on the sinking of the Pleiades, the sprawling world image on Achilles’ shield in the Iliad, Ovid’s moving stories of personal loss told against a cosmic landscape forever in motion — all important reminders of the value of the language arts, however imperfect, in placing ourselves within such immenseness and multiplicity.”

M ESSAGE F ROM T H E D E A N

Universal Questions

Since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the vastness of space, the mystery of the endless expanse, and the possibilities of alien civilizations and extreme natural phenomena. Certainly, I am not alone. From the earliest days of humanity’s history, our eyes and minds have been set on the cosmos. Celestial objects and events captured imaginations, provoking the development of origin myths, religions and cultural traditions. Perhaps nothing more strongly connects our species across time than an innate curiosity about where we all come from.

“May we accept the universe’s many invitations to look up in faith, while never forgetting just how intricately connected we are to other living beings, near and far.

May we see and take care of each other as if our very lives depended on it, reassured that the universe — so rich in biodiversity, energy, light and shadow — is but one of many teachers. And right now, it is graciously working feverishly to hold us all. May we see this, too.”

ILLUS TR ATION: IS TOCK; THE HE ART OF THE ANDES BY FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH (1826–1900); ILLUS TR ATION COURTESY OF NASA , ESA , AND G. BACON (S T SCI)

LANITA JACOBS, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity and anthropology

“According to German explorer and naturalist Alexander von Humboldt’s compendious Cosmos (1845–62), the word encompasses the harmony of heavens and Earth; recognizes ‘unity in diversity.’ Close scientific observation of nature, Humboldt explains, reveals interconnectedness and completeness: Damage a part, and you damage the whole. Above all, I love how he shows that subjective responses — whether our own or those of artists and writers — are crucial to internalizing these ecological truths.”

My own interest has always been that of a scientist, trying to make sense of what we have collectively learned about the nature of the universe, and striving to add to that understanding. It is astounding to me both how much we have been able to piece together, and how much remains to be explored.

The collective work of astrophysicists and cosmologists over decades has enabled us to take “baby pictures” of the cosmos from which we can glean amazingly detailed information about the age, composition, history and fundamental underlying physics of our universe. We have observed extreme phenomena like black holes that hold the key to understanding how gravity and quantum mechanics work together. High-powered telescopes have given us a clear understanding of how stars, planets and galaxies form, along with beautiful images of stars being born and spectacularly exploding. And we have confirmed almost 5,000 planets outside our solar system within the closest region of our own galaxy alone.

But each incredible insight that we uncover opens up a new set of questions: We know that the universe started off microscopic in size and has expanded to a vastness that is difficult to comprehend and that space itself continues to expand. Where did our infant universe come from in the first place, and into what is it expanding? We know that most of the universe is composed of some kind of missing mass and another kind of missing energy. What are these mysterious forms of mass and energy, and what do they mean for us? From a statistical perspective, it is all but certain that intelligent life exists on other planets. Who are these other beings, what are they like, and will we ever have contact with them?

This issue of USC Dornsife Magazine offers our experts’ perspectives on a wide array of topics related to the cosmos. You’ll find insights about the ways in which ancient cultures experienced the skies, the future ownership of outer space and its resources, how we explore the origins of the universe, what it might be like to encounter alien life and more. We hope you enjoy the read.

AMBER D. MILLER Dean, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair

KATE FLINT, Provost Professor of Art History and English

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 1

COVER STORY

“And I’m floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today …”

SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR STRATEGIC INITIATIVES AND COMMUNICATION

Lance Ignon

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Susan Bell

ART DIRECTOR / PRODUCTION MANAGER

Letty Avila

WRITERS AND EDITORS

Michelle Boston Margaret Crable Darrin S. Joy Jim Key Stephen Koenig Meredith McGroarty

VIDEOGRAPHER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

Mike Glier

SENIOR WEB SPECIALIST

Michael Liu

COMMUNICATIONS ASSISTANT

Deann Webb

CONTRIBUTORS Crisann Begley-Smith, Maddy Davis, Eric Lindberg, Marc Merhej, Jenesse Miller, Tia Richards USC DORNSIFE ADMINISTRATION Amber D. Miller, Dean • Jan Amend, Divisional Dean for the Life Sciences • Emily Hodgson Anderson, College Dean of Undergraduate Education • Stephen Bradforth, Senior Advisor to the Dean for Research Strategy and Development • Kimberly Freeman, Associate Dean, Chief Diversity Officer • Moh El-Naggar, Divisional Dean for the Physical Sciences and Mathematics • Lance Ignon, Senior Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Communication • Peter Mancall, Divisional Dean for the Social Sciences • Renee Perez, Vice Dean, Administration and Finance • Eddie Sartin, Senior Associate Dean for Advancement • Sam Steinberg, Interim College Dean of Graduate and Professional Education • Sherry Velasco, Divisional Dean for the Humanities USC DORNSIFE BOARD OF COUNCILORS Kathy Leventhal, Chair • Wendy Abrams • Robert D. Beyer • David Bohnett • Jon Brayshaw • Ramona Cappello • Alan Colowick • Richard S. Flores • Shane Foley • Vab Goel • Lisa Goldman • Jana Waring Greer • Pierre Habis • Yossie Hollander • Janice Bryant Howroyd • Martin Irani • Dan James • Suzanne Nora Johnson • Bettina Kallins • Yoon Kim • Samuel King • Jaime Lee • Arthur Lev • Roger Lynch • Robert Osher • Gerald Papazian • Andrew Perlman • Lawrence Piro • Edoardo Ponti • Kelly Porter • Michael Reilly • Carole Shammas • Rajeev Tandon

It was July 1969 and while I sang along to David Bowie’s newly released “Space Oddity” on breakfast radio, my grandmother, born in Wales at the tail end of the 19th century, was pouring her modest retirement savings into the purchase of an “extravagantly expensive” (according to my mother) color television, determined to watch the first humans walk on the moon in full Technicolor. Even more vividly than I can remember seeing Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong take those first tentative steps on the dusty lunar surface, I remember my grandmother’s palpable excitement and sense of wonder at what was to her, born before the Wright Brothers’ inaugural flight, an almost inconceivable achievement.

I also remember the music. “Space Oddity” was initially banned in the United States, and also by the BBC in the United Kingdom, in case its haunting tale of “Major Tom,” a doomed astronaut cut adrift in space, should prove too much of a downer at what was intended to be a time of jubilant celebration. However, fortunately for nascent Bowie fans like me, the BBC TV team responsible for handling the U.K.’s Apollo coverage apparently never got the memo, blithely broadcasting his song to the nation as the background music to the landing.

In this issue, we celebrate how the cosmos has inspired human creativity among artists of all genres — from musicians and writers to painters, designers and filmmakers. We listen in on a conversation between two theoretical cosmologists discussing their research into some of the greatest mysteries of the universe. We learn about our dean’s first major experiments as an astrophysicist in Chile’s Atacama Desert. We meet two alumni who co-lead a laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena where they search for the origins of life on Earth to better understand where life might begin elsewhere in the universe. We look at the possibility of extraterrestrial life and how we might best communicate with aliens. Our experts debate the ethical and political implications of attempting to own the cosmos and its resources.

Since our ancestors first walked the Earth, we have experienced awe and wonder as we look up at the magnificent splendor of the night sky. In this issue, we also take you on a journey back in time to explore what the ancients figured out about the universe.

We hope you enjoy the immersive and painterly qualities of our cover image — a photograph released last year by NASA to celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope’s 30th birthday. The giant red nebula and its smaller blue neighbor are part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, located 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef,” for its resemblance to a coral reef floating in a vast sea of stars. Some of those stars are monsters, each 10 to 20 times more massive than our sun, while the seemingly isolated blue nebula was created by a solitary mammoth star 200,000 times brighter than our sun.

And if that doesn’t inspire awe and wonder, I don’t know what will! —S.B. COVER IMAGE COURTESY OF NASA, ESA AND STSCI

Fight On! Futuristic designs by the so-called "godfather of Space-Age fashion" André Courrèges were featured in the March 1964 issue of Vogue, heralding a popular trend that still persists today.

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© 1964 WILLIAM KLEIN

USC DORNSIFE MAGAZINE Published twice a year by USC Dornsife Office of Communication at the University of Southern California. © 2021 USC Dornsife College.

The diverse opinions expressed in USC Dornsife Magazine do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, USC Dornsife administration or USC. USC Dornsife Magazine welcomes comments from its readers to magazine@dornsife.usc.edu or USC Dornsife Magazine, SCT-2400, Los Angeles, CA 90089.

Contents

FA LL 2 0 2 1 / W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 STARS IN THEIR EYES USC Dornsife faculty reflect on how the cosmos inspires them.

4 FROM THE HEART OF USC Counting Catalina’s creatures; New microscopy facility; Historic Pompeii discovery; Latinx center launch; Mapping pollution in Los Angeles; Simplifying climate jargon.

5

Curriculum

6 Profile

9 Lexicon

12 Academy

in the Public Square

14 Our

World 38 Archive

39 DORNSIFE FAMILY

Hanna Reisler elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Twin alumnae earn USC degrees while raising children as single mothers.

Vahé Peroomian, professor (teaching) of physics and astronomy at USC Dornsife, photographed the total lunar eclipse of May 26 against the backdrop of the Milky Way at Boot Arch in the Alabama Hills near Lone Pine, California. The eclipsed moon appears as a faint red disk in the sky due to a small amount of light being refracted through the Earth’s atmosphere, giving the lunar eclipse its “blood moon” nickname.

THE COSMOS ISSUE

16 A Cosmic Conversation

USC Dornsife cosmologists Vera Gluscevic and Elena Pierpaoli are searching for answers to the mysteries of the universe. By Susan Bell

22 Children of the Cosmos: What the Ancients Knew

We have been fascinated by the wonders of the universe since our earliest ancestors first gazed up in awe at the night sky. So, how did ancient civilizations make sense of the cosmos — and what did they get right? By Susan Bell

26 Celestial Inspiration

Our sense of wonder at the cosmos, and our desire to try to make sense of our place within it, have inspired generations of artists, writers, designers, musicians and filmmakers. By Darrin S. Joy

PHOTO BY VAHÉ PEROOMIAN

30 Who Owns the Universe?

With many countries, companies and individuals intensifying their space exploration programs, questions about rights, ownership and the feasibility of manned space missions are coming to the fore of public debate. By Meredith McGroarty

34 Is There Anyone Out There?

For many scientists, it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when” we encounter alien life. So, what will happen when humans finally do come face-to-face with E.T.? By Margaret Crable

39 Faculty

News

40 Alumni

News

40 Faculty

42 Alumni

Canon

43 Dornsife

Canon

Olympians

44 TROJAN COMMUNITY New alumni adventure: An opportunity to participate in a weeklong literary experience — “bookpacking” in New Mexico.

CONNECT WITH USC DORNSIFE Facebook.com/USCDornsife Instagram.com/USCDornsife Twitter.com/USCDornsife LinkedIn.com/school/USCDornsife YouTube.com/USCDornsife

dornsife.usc.edu/magazine Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 3

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Viewpoint EXPERT OPINIONS

“Parents, especially immigrant parents, have often worked incredibly hard to create opportunities for their children.

Still, some parents have to learn that their children’s lives are not theirs, no matter what they sacrificed.”

VIET THANH NGUYEN, University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature, in a July 9 op-ed in The New York Times offering advice to artists whose parents want them to be engineers.

“Nowadays, what we are seeing is that the effects of climate change are hitting much closer to home and much closer to the present than the future.

As that’s happening, obviously our concern is becoming heightened, our anxiety is becoming heightened, our desire to act is heightened as well.”

Counting Catalina’s Creatures A professor and his student complete the first comprehensive biodiversity survey of one of Santa Catalina Island’s treasured nature preserves. By Margaret Crable Blue Cavern Point on the eastern edge of Santa Catalina Island, 25 miles off the coast of San Pedro, California, is a hotbed of life. In the shallows, sea urchins and sea cucumbers cling to rocks. Farther out in deeper seas, bright orange garibaldi and giant sea bass the size of pianos make their home in rippling forests of giant kelp.

The area is divided into two protected areas: offshore and onshore. The onshore region encompasses the first three square miles of the preserve. Since 1988, the area has been fiercely protected from fishing or specimen collection.

The USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies Marine Science Center is located on the edge of the preserve.

Despite this area’s exceptional biodiversity, no one had completed a comprehensive survey of its enormous variety of marine life. In 2015, David Ginsburg, professor (teaching) of environmental studies, and Audrey Looby, then an undergraduate majoring in environmental studies, set out to change that.

Ginsburg and Looby completed visual surveys of five intertidal reefs around the point, meticulously identifying and recording everything from the smallest microalgae to those piano-sized bass. They also dived into old records and archives, noting the flora and fauna that had been spotted in the area in the past.

Some of their encounters were newsworthy. On Looby’s last dive of the summer, she and her fellow divers spotted a great white shark that was 15-feet long and pregnant. It was one of only a handful of such sightings ever recorded in the area.

Ginsburg and Looby’s work also produced more ominous findings — how humans are changing the cove, despite protective efforts.

The psychedelic nudibranch, for example, has declined severely in number, likely due to pollution and collecting for home aquariums. Sightings of subtropical species uncommon to the cove, such as the finescale triggerfish, point to warming oceans.

By the end of their research, Ginsburg and Looby had documented more than 1,000 different kinds of marine macroalgae, plants, invertebrates and fish.

Their study, “Nearshore Species Biodiversity of a Marine Protected Area off Santa Catalina Island, California,” was published in the March 2021 issue of Western North American Naturalist.

Their ecological discoveries combined with the catalog of species — the most complete in history — make Ginsburg and Looby’s study an important baseline for keeping this treasured area intact.

JOE ÁRVAI, Dana and David Dornsife Chair and Wrigley Institute Director and professor of psychology, in a Sept. 28 Spectrum News 1 feature on the increasing anxiety related to climate change.

PATRICIA GRABAREK, lecturer of psychology, in a Sept. 24 CBS Los Angeles report on the effects of working from home.

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Although great white sharks are rare close to the shores of Catalina Island, undergraduate researcher Audrey Looby sighted one during a research dive.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GRIFFIN SREDNICK

“Research for decades has shown that if we allow employees to have autonomy over how they do their work, and flexibility in their schedules, they are much more likely to be happy in their jobs.”

CUR R ICULU M

Healing Magic

VODOU CEREMONY AROUND TREE PAINTING BY GER ARD VALCIN; WARD PHOTO BY EDDIE NORTH-HAGER

MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT AND HEALING (ANTH 373) Instructor: Thomas Ward, associate professor (teaching) of anthropology

Perched on a shelf in Thomas Ward’s home office is a set of Vodou dolls. Curiously, they’re

not in the shape of human beings but are little round balls topped with conical “hats.” Filled with dense soil and wrapped tightly with black and red ribbon, they’re as heavy as paperweights.

“They are beautiful objects,” Ward says of the dolls, which he brought back from a trip to Haiti in 1983. “They can be used for healing and they can also be used for the dark arts.”

But Ward is no Severus Snape from the Harry Potter franchise.

“Our class explores the magical components of healing,

and while witchcraft can be used for healing or harm, our class focuses only on ‘white magic,’ ” he says.

In the anthropological, cross-cultural context, the term ‘magic’ is used for nonWestern methods of healing or other ritual practices. Ward defines magic in the context of this course as unexplained causality.

“Something happens and it causes something else to happen and we see the result, but we don’t know exactly how it works,” he says, noting that the term is used even in quantum physics to explain

causal relationships that we don’t completely understand.

The focus of the course, he says, is on expanding our horizons while remaining respectful and humble about other people’s traditions.

Ward wants students to think about what healing means from a holistic perspective.

“We tend to think of healing in the West as mainly physical, emotional and psychological, whereas in the non-Western context, healing means to restore a balance or a sense of wholeness in an individual and his or her environment, including family, friends,

nature, spirits and ancestors.

So, healing is much more comprehensive — it restores a person’s health, happiness and wholeness.”

These ideas, Ward says, are starting to gain traction in the United States, with more emphasis on social relationships, community and spirituality. —S.B.

In the course “Magic, Witchcraft and Healing,” students explore historical and geographical aspects of mystical arts, including Voudo rituals like the one depicted in the painting above by Haitian artist Gerard Valcin.

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 5

PROF ILE

Searching for the Origins of Life

Alumni Laurie Barge and Scott Perl outside the building housing the Origins and Habitability Lab they co-lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

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PHOTO BY MIKE GLIER

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

Scott Perl ’19 is nearly a mile beneath the Earth’s surface, crunching through the tunnels of the Boulby Underground Laboratory on England’s North Yorkshire coast. He’s gathering salt — 250-million-year-old salt, to be precise.

Boulby was dug into an ancient sea bed, where layers of salty sediment keep a record of the chemistry of past life.

At the end of his trip, Perl will ship hundreds of pounds of briny sand back to his lab in California, where he’ll examine it for chemical signatures of ancient microbial life and to determine how long that evidence might have survived — an important factor when looking for signs of life on other planets.

His briny samples will share storage space with specimens from another extreme environment: deep-sea vents. Perl’s laboratory partner and fellow USC Dornsife Ph.D. graduate, Laurie Barge ’09, is researching fluid and minerals gathered from ocean floor vents that bubble 200 miles off the coast of southern Oregon.

The duo co-leads the Origins and Habitability Lab at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

They research how life formed on Earth to better understand how life might form on other planets. This means important lab collaborators are working “off-world.”

“We can analyze samples in our lab using instrument techniques similar to the instruments on the Mars rovers,” says Perl. Their lab can also mimic the environments of other planets, helping scientists determine the best methods for how to look for life on other worlds.

CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH Barge and Perl were space enthusiasts from an early age.

They grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and dreamed of exploring the universe. Both enrolled as undergraduates with the goal of eventually working at NASA. As Barge began studying astronomy and astrophysics at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, she found herself increasingly drawn to the question of where life on Earth came from, and whether there might be life elsewhere in the universe.

She enrolled at USC Dornsife to pursue a Ph.D. in geological sciences after discovering the research of Ken Nealson, who was using geobiology to search for life on other planets.

Nealson, now Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, became her doctoral adviser.

“The department was wonderful; it really paid attention to students. I enjoyed having the freedom to explore astrobiology and biosignatures research for my thesis, and to also work at JPL part time as an intern, both of which led to my eventual postdoctoral research at JPL,” says Barge.

Perl graduated from State University of New York at Stony Brook with degrees in geology and material science, then accepted a job at JPL. He selected USC Dornsife for his geological sciences and geobiology Ph.D. program because of its flexibility for working students.

“I was looking for a department that was small enough that I could have face time with my adviser and where I wouldn’t be treated differently because I was already full time at JPL,” says Perl.

“USC and JPL have a strong professional network.”

Barge and Perl met while working at JPL on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, a spacecraft designed to study the geology and

climate of Mars, and struck up a friendship. They were working as investigation scientists for instruments aboard the craft — Barge for the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) and Perl for the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars

where life first began is hotly debated, with some researchers arguing for shallow seas while others favor the hot waters bubbling up from deep ocean vents. Perl, Barge, their students and postdocs conduct experiments that mimic various early Earth and planetary environments to

in our scientific knowledge that Barge hopes to fill.

“We need to better understand the boundary between life and non-life,” she says.

Barge notes that planets like Mars or moons like Jupiter’s Europa or Saturn’s Enceladus could show evidence of organic compounds, yet it might be

“How I worked with my adviser at USC Dornsife is how I work with my students here in the lab.”

(CRISM). The HiRISE camera snaps images and helps find landing sites for future missions while CRISM maps mineral residue that appears where water once existed.

Barge and Perl didn’t realize at first that they were both USC Dornsife alumni or that they had attended the same astrobiology summer school in Spain, just one year apart.

“It’s funny, you can have the same life path as someone but never meet,” says Barge.

The two eventually decided to join forces and combined their individual labs into one.

“We realized there were many benefits of sharing leadership of a research group,” explains Perl.

SALT AND SEAS Now they spend their days trying to unravel one of the most complex conundrums in astrobiology — how life began on our planet and how it can thrive on other solar system bodies. They use Earth field sites as test beds and analogous laboratory experiments to recreate rock-fluid interactions that could have led to the origin of life.

It’s a surprisingly unresolved question. Even pinpointing

understand which conditions would have been most conducive to chemistry leading to life’s origin.

They also look at samples from areas that once held life on Earth, like the sediment at Boulby, to see what traces life leaves behind. Understanding the chemical signature of past life on our planet allows scientists to look for those similar signs in the rocks they analyze on, say, Mars — or, perhaps, in the icy plumes of the ocean moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

“If life can emerge in deepsea vents, then maybe it could have emerged on these ocean worlds as well, and future missions might be able to see signs of that organic chemistry,” explains Barge.

NASA’s rovers can touch down on Mars where water once stood and then scan for signs of life, or future missions could analyze plume material from the icy moons, with Barge and Perl comparing the mission data to what they see in the lab and in the field.

The precise point at which organic compounds acquire enough complexity to sufficiently form “life” is also still fuzzy — an important gap

hard to determine if these compounds would qualify as once-living organisms.

LAB RESULTS Along with solving pressing scientific questions, Perl and Barge are also defying stereotypes of scientists as lone geniuses.

“Laurie and I collaborate on everything,” Perl says. “We each have our favorite science projects but we write proposals together and serve as comentors to all of our students.

Our work is a collective.”

They host a rotating crew of undergraduate and graduate students who assist with research projects or embark on their own science investigations. Barge and Perl credit USC Dornsife with helping inspire their lab group’s collaborative culture, which prioritizes curiosity and longterm friendship.

“How I worked with my adviser at USC Dornsife is how I work with my students here in the lab,” says Perl. “I still talk to my thesis advisers and our students return again and again. We focus not just on science experiments and research, but also on building lifelong careers.” —M.C. Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 7

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

CALLING ALL JEP ALUMNI

Tax Savings

Student-faculty research team finds biennial tax filing financially benefits the public and the government.

Cockerell adds that she enjoyed applying concepts learned in Dubin’s class to a real-world setting. Hearing them featured on a popular show on public radio was even better, she says.

“If you’d told me two years ago that I would have co-written a paper with a professor, much less one about taxation, I would have been really surprised.” —M.M.

Magnificent Views Are you one of the 100,000 alumni who participated in USC’s Joint Educational Project (JEP) as a student?

If so, JEP would love to reconnect with you now in preparation for its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2022.

To learn more go to: dornsife.usc.edu/jep50.

Recognition F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S O F U S C D A N A A N D D AV I D D O R N S I F E C O L L E G E O F L E T T E R S , A R T S A N D S C I E N C E S

MAGAZINE

FALL 2020 / WINTER 2021

The Memory Issue

ALL IN GOOD TIME In the past lie the keys to a better future.

L.A. PRESS CLUB HONORS USC Dornsife Magazine’s The Memory Issue was honored with an award by the Los Angeles Press Club at the 63rd Southern California Journalism Awards held at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Oct. 16. Judges awarded the Fall 2020/Winter 2021 issue second place in the “Magazines, Best In-house or Corporate Publication” category, bringing the total number of honors awarded to USC Dornsife Magazine to 41 since its 2012 redesign.

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Paying taxes every two years would not only halve springtime blood pressure spikes, it could actually save the federal government and the American public up to $83 billion, according to new research by a USC Dornsife economics professor and one of his students.

In their research study, Emma Cockerell, a senior majoring in economics/mathematics, and Jeffrey Dubin, adjunct professor of the practice of economics, compared the financial impact of annual versus biennial tax filing by analyzing several factors, such as the amount of money the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spends on annual return audits, IRS staffing levels and the annual cost of tax preparation services for the public.

The research, which was featured on NPR’s “The Indicator,” showed that biennial taxation would significantly decrease the $67 billion Americans spend each year on tax preparation, a figure that includes both the cost of accounting services and the amount of time individuals spend calculating their own taxes.

“The tax system as it is imposes huge burdens on everyday Americans,” Cockerell says. “Part of making it more equitable is making it more accessible, cheaper and less burdensome for low-income earners.”

Filing taxes every two years would also ease the pressure on enforcement staff at the IRS — already stretched thin due to budget cuts — and allow them to pursue noncompliance issues, like tax evasion, more thoroughly.

Between 2011 and 2013, noncompliance cost the government about $380 billion in annual revenue. With biennial tax filing, Cockerell says, IRS auditors could handle twice as many returns and spend more time investigating them.

Cockerell says her partnership with Dubin began in spring 2020, when she took his “Economic Consulting and Applied Managerial Economics” class. Dubin mentioned during the course that he often has research work for students who are looking to invest extra effort in their studies and hone career skills, such as writing and analysis.

About 500 years ago, a Dutch maker of spectacles first paired two refractive lenses to magnify objects, revealing a world so unexpected and new it could only be described by the instrument that revealed it. Ever since, scientists have endeavored to peer ever deeper into the microscopic universe, inventing new instruments and techniques — including electron microscopy — that have brought innumerable benefits, particularly in the fields of biology and human health.

One of the most significant advances in structural biology — imaging molecules — builds on the power of electron microscopy by cooling samples to temperatures approaching absolute zero, where molecules stop moving altogether. Called cryo-electron microscopy, or cryoEM, the technique enables scientists to take a snapshot of biological molecules in three dimensions.

“It really is a game changer in biology,” says USC Dornsife’s Stephen Bradforth, professor of chemistry and senior advisor to the dean for research strategy and development.

“It enables us to very quickly do what used to be impossible.”

Now USC will be part of that game change thanks to a colocation agreement with Amgen, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies, resulting in the establishment of a cryo-EM core facility at the university.

Two of the world’s most advanced cryo-EM systems, the Glacios and Krios cryo-EM instruments, reside in the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience. There, scientists from both USC and Amgen will share access to the technology, which has value in searching for potential new therapeutic drug targets.

The new cryo-EM facility will create a central core for rapid problem-solving, accelerating USC’s research efforts while also helping to generate new research grants for the university. —D.S.J.

J E P H O U S E P H O T O BY M A R C M E R H E J; U S C D O R N S I F E M AG A Z I N E C OV E R BY D E N N I S L A N; TA X S AV I N G S I M AG E S O U R C E: I S T O C K ; M I C R O S C O P Y FAC I L I T Y I M AG E S O U R C E: W I K I C O M M O N S

USC teams up with biotechnology giant Amgen to open a universe of research possibilities.

LE X ICON

Stretched Thin

PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY

PAT E S B A R O N I L I T H O G R A P H BY L EO N E T T O C A P P IE L LO; P E R O O M I A N P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F VA H É P E R O O M I A N

SPAGHETTIFICATION spə. . .fə. ke . ən / noun Aka the noodle effect, the stretching of an object due to gravitational tidal forces as it falls into a black hole.

Origin: Coined by Stephen Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time to describe the unfortunate effect a black hole’s enormous gravitational forces would have upon an astronaut standing on the surface of a collapsed star.

Usage: Although spaghettification can occur any time strong tidal forces are involved, the term is most often used to describe the gravitational effect near black holes.

“A stellar-mass black hole typically has a radius of about 6 miles. An astronaut falling in feet first from 1,000 yards away would experience a tidal force — the difference between the gravitational forces on his feet and head — that would be a thousand times stronger than the tidal forces the moon exerts on Earth. This would result in the spaghettification of the astronaut into a thin strand of molecules long before he reached the black hole.”

Vahé Peroomian, professor (teaching) of physics and astronomy, has 25 years of research experience in space weather and geomagnetic storms. His passion for astronomy is reflected in teaching interdisciplinary courses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in the universe and on the human exploration and settlement of the solar system.

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 9

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Numbers LIVING IN L.A. A new Understanding Coronavirus in America Study led by researchers at USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research found that those who received a COVID-19 vaccine when the shots were first made available experienced reduced anxiety after just one dose.

While the vaccine’s expected physical benefits — including protection from infection, lifethreatening symptoms and hospitalization — are obvious, the resulting mental health benefits have received less consideration until now.

The research, published in the journal PLOS One, compared changes in the mental health of people vaccinated for COVID-19 and people who were unvaccinated.

~8,000 The number of adult United States residents surveyed for the study from March 2020 through March 2021.

15%

The decrease vaccinated participants felt in the likelihood of feeling severely depressed.

4

The number of questions used to assess anxiety and depression levels in the study.

157K

The number of observations that make up the study data.

10

This summer, USC Dornsife undergraduates helped excavate one of the most well-preserved sets of human remains ever discovered in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. By Margaret Crable

Undergraduate archaeology students Lauren Malkoun and Luis Rodriguez-Perez and economics major Sabrina Dimesa helped excavate the partially mummified remains of Marcus Venerius Secundio, a former slave and priest who lived and died in Pompeii before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius more than 2,000 years ago.

The skeleton still possesses wisps of white hair and the remains of an earlobe.

Secundio’s grave is significant not just for his excellent physical preservation but also for what the tombstone tells us about his life. According to the grave’s inscription, in addition to his work as a priest in a religious group dedicated to Emperor Augustus, Secundio was a patron of the arts, paying for plays to be performed in Greek.

This was a particularly exciting discovery for scholars, who say it is the first concrete evidence that the language was used theatrically in the city where most residents spoke Latin.

“That performances in Greek were organized is evidence of the lively and open cultural climate which characterized ancient Pompeii,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

Most Roman adults were cremated, so finding skeletal remains is uncommon, and Secundio’s body was unusually well-preserved for its age. Researchers are still determining if there was any intentional effort to mummify the corpse.

Buried outside Secundio’s tomb were several urns containing ashes, probably the cremated remains of members of his family.

Rodriguez-Perez helped bring one of these urns into the light for the first time in nearly 2,000 years. As he

sifted through layers of sediment looking for clues about how life was lived in ancient Pompeii, a clump of ash — an indication of burnt grave offerings — signaled that he was on the right path to discovery. “I knew before I even got down [to the urn] that I was going to find something incredible,” he says.

While digging, he reflected on his training at USC Dornsife. “It made me think about all the things I had done to get there, all my work at the USC Archaeology Research Center, the digs I’d done beforehand,” says Rodriquez-Perez. “Because this could definitely be the coolest thing I might ever excavate.”

All three students grappled with the morality of excavating a gravesite. Although there’s much to be learned historically from these types of digs, such excavations come at the price of disturbing human remains.

“Coming into these sacred spaces as archaeologists requires an understanding of cultural practices and also the duty to respect the rituals of these spaces,” says Dimesa.

Hopefully, future funerary archaeology will rely less on disturbing graves and more on new methods such as photogrammetry, which uses hundreds of photos to assemble a 3D model of an artifact. Researchers can then study the object virtually, without having to move it from its original site.

Secundio’s tomb was located in the Porta Sarno Necropolis, where many of the city’s dead were buried. The necropolis is a rich site for learning about Roman burial practices.

The remains are currently under analysis at the Laboratory of Applied Research in Pompeii, where researchers are also determining how to preserve them.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ARCHAEOLOGIC AL PARK OF P OMPEII

1M

The approximate number of adults who stopped experiencing mild mental distress after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine between Dec. 2020 and March 2021.

A Skeleton Speaks

FROM THE HE ART OF USC Spotlight

Latinx Center Launch Mapping L.A.’s CO2 New institute will examine the issues important to Latinx populations in Southern California and beyond.

L AT N I X C E N T E R I M AG E S O U R C E: I S T O C K ; C A R B O N C E N S U S P H O T O BY M I K E G L I E R ; TA N A K A P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F I B S A

Juan De Lara spent his childhood traveling throughout the western United States with his parents, who were migrant farmworkers. His family, like many others who take similar routes today, picked the grapes, apples and asparagus that end up on tables across the country.

De Lara’s early experiences fundamentally shaped his academic research interests. He has published widely on issues related to immigrant worker rights and environmental justice, and on the effects of globalization on the Latinx populations of Southern California. Now, he is applying his expertise to his new role as director of the Latinx and Latin American Studies Center at USC Dornsife.

“This center has been established as part of a larger movement for diversity, equity and inclusion,” says De Lara, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity. “This is about acknowledging that USC is in the middle of a city and a county that is overwhelmingly Latina and Latino, and yet has not focused enough as an institution on serving those communities. We are beginning to change that.”

De Lara says he hopes the center will become a place where community members, academics and students can “celebrate the diverse Latinx community” and engage in research projects that pertain to issues affecting Latinx communities not only in the U.S. but across Latin America.

“I want to increase the presence of the Latinx community on the USC campus,” he says. “In the fall, we hope to have a space on campus where we can bring people together to engage in conversations about the critical issues that are affecting the lives of our diverse Latin American and Latinx communities, such as sustainable environmental justice, Latinx youth, economic equity and political power.” —M.M.

New sensor network aims to measure greenhouse gases and other noxious emissions.

ROBERT TANAKA ’22 MATHEMATICS AND ECONOMICS

USC Dornsife’s William Berelson installs a USC Carbon Census sensor near the roof of the Ahmanson Center on the University Park campus.

They look simple enough, light gray and about the size of a loaf of bread. On their face, a label sports a colorful “C” stylized to resemble a molecular structure along with the words “Carbon Census at USC.” Inside the metal boxes, a highly sophisticated package of electronic sensors sniffs the surrounding air for an array of pollutants. The climate-warming gas carbon dioxide, its suffocating cousin carbon monoxide and various nitrogen oxide-containing compounds, the type that turn the Los Angeles air hazy orange and brown, rank high among the noxious air components.

The sensors also detect particulate matter — microscopic bits of smoke, soot, dust and other harmful compounds — and ozone, and measure air temperature and humidity.

The boxes are part of a network assembled by USC Dornsife’s William Berelson, professor of Earth sciences, environmental studies and spatial sciences, to map air quality in L.A. neighborhoods to determine if and how the concentration of the assorted pollutants changes over time.

“For example, is carbon monoxide always higher at sites near freeways — does truck traffic drive CO concentration?

That hypothesis is based on the fact that CO forms in combustion engines,” he says. His sensors can help determine if that belief is correct.

Berelson also aims to find out if levels of particulate matter — particularly the dangerous “PM2.5” — are higher or lower in regions of the city with more trees and plants. The project contributes to USC’s Urban Trees Initiative, a collaborative project led by USC Dornsife’s Public Exchange. The initiative is designed to assist L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s goal of planting nearly 100,000 trees throughout the city.

A key function of Berelson’s carbon sensor network will be to establish the current levels of CO2 throughout L.A. so researchers, policymakers and others can clearly see the effects of moving to more eco-friendly practices. —D.S.J.

“When I catch somebody in competition and they just fly, that’s the greatest feeling in the world. It’s hard to explain what it’s like, but making a superstrong guy just look like he slipped on a banana peel in a cartoon — that, to me, is an incredible feeling.”

Born in Denver, Colorado, judo champion Robert Tanaka was diagnosed with albinism as a young child. The inherited condition not only gives this fourth-generation Japanese American his distinctive pale skin, hair and eyes, but it also caused his visual impairment.

Tanaka can only see five feet before objects dissolve into blurry, colored shapes.

As a child, he was delighted and relieved to discover judo, as it was impossible for him to play most other sports.

After 16 years of training and competition, he qualified for the Tokyo Paralympic Games, where he proudly represented Team USA this summer.

“I get to wear both my last name and USA on my back.

That will be an incredible feeling,” he said before leaving for Japan. “For me, there’s no higher honor.” —S.B. Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 11

ACA DE M Y I N T H E P U B L I C S Q U A R E

Tackling Hunger in Los Angeles County While food insecurity has returned to pre-pandemic levels, nearly 1 million Los Angeles County residents — one in 10 Angelenos — are still food insecure, according to a new report spearheaded by USC Dornsife Public Exchange.

One in three L.A. County households experienced food insecurity — disruptions in eating because of a lack of money or resources — from April to December 2020.

During the first half of 2021, the ratio fell to just over 1 in 10, according to the new study.

Researchers found adults who remained food insecure in the first half of 2021 were predominantly low-income, female, Latinx and between the ages of 18 and 40.

As of June 2021, just one in four food-insecure households were receiving benefits from CalFresh, a California state food assistance program. More than a third of them live in “food deserts” — low-income areas with poor access to supermarkets and large grocery stores.

1/10

One in three Los Angeles County households experienced food insecurity during April to December 2020.

77%

During the first half of 2021, the ratio of those experiencing food insecurity fell to just over 1 in 10 Los Angeles County households.

More than three-quarters of census tracts that are food deserts have no food assistance providers.

1M

Nearly 1 million Los Angeles County residents find it difficult to put food on the table.

NEW DATA, NEW INSIGHTS The research included data provided by two private-sector partners: Yelp, the company that connects people with local businesses; and findhelp.org, which provides a free, search and referral platform tool to connect people with free and reduced-cost programs in their local area. The partnerships allowed researchers to better understand resources and challenges for those experiencing food insecurity in real time.

“Collaborating with privatesector organizations, such as Yelp and findhelp.org, revolutionizes our ability to analyze time-sensitive information quickly so our research can inform solutions,” said lead researcher Kayla de la Haye, 12

50% Half of the people who were food insecure were unable to get groceries delivered.

USC DORNSIFE PUBLIC EXCHANGE USC Dornsife Public Exchange, which fast-tracks collaborations between academic researchers and the public and private sectors to define, analyze and solve complex problems, spearheaded the study. It was conducted by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the USC Dornsife Spatial Sciences Institute and the USC Price School of Public Policy, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Emergency Food Security Branch.

Data came from the Understanding Coronavirus in America tracking survey administered by the USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.

One in three people experiencing food insecurity had difficulty obtaining food because they lacked transportation or because food stores were either closed or had limited hours.

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

associate professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. During the pandemic, many food outlets had to temporarily close or reduce their number of customers, de la Haye noted.

“New sources of data allowed us to identify when and where these closures occurred, as well as neighborhoods with a double burden of food deserts and ‘food assistance deserts,’ meaning no food assistance providers were nearby,” she said.

The data showed that one in three census tracts in the Antelope Valley and South L.A. face that double burden. Researchers also found that 77% of census tracts that are food deserts have no food assistance providers.

Also, one in three people experiencing food insecurity had difficulty getting food because they lacked transportation or because food stores were either closed or had limited hours.

FINDING SOLUTIONS C O M P O S I T E B Y L E T T Y A V I L A / I M A G E S O U R C E : I S T O C K ; S E A G R A N T I M A G E SS O B YU RDCE EN:NI ISST O L AC N K

The report on the findings includes several recommendations for L.A. County.

They include: • Targeting outreach to enroll more food-insecure people in CalFresh.

• Investigating community perspectives by interviewing those impacted by food insecurity.

• Addressing equitable access to food through urban planning.

• Monitoring and investing in fair and resilient food systems by building partnerships with researchers, government, community organizations and private partners before a crisis hits. —J.M.

Climate Jargon Cure

Information about climate change abounds, but is it understandable? A new study suggests simplicity.

...

elegant alternatives to existing language,” Bruine de Bruin said. “Even though climate change may be a complex issue, there is no need to make it even more complex by using complicated words.” —L.I.

Think Like a Scientist

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A new USC Dornsife Public Exchange-UN Foundation study finds that United States residents struggle to understand terms frequently used by scientists to describe climate change. Study participants said some were too complex while others were misunderstood in the context of climate change.

“One survey respondent summed it up nicely, saying, ‘It sounds like you’re talking over people,’ ” said Wändi Bruine de Bruin, the study’s lead author and Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences at USC Dornsife and USC Price School of Public Policy.

“Scientists need to replace jargon with everyday language to be understood by a lay audience.”

Study participants were asked to rate how easy or hard it was to understand eight terms drawn from publicly available reports written by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): “mitigation,” “carbon neutral,” “unprecedented transition,” “tipping point,” “sustainable development,” “carbon dioxide removal,” “adaptation” and “abrupt change.”

Participants said “mitigation” was the most difficult to understand. Mitigation, in the context of climate change, refers to actions intended to reduce the rate of climate change. More than half of the respondents referred to the word in the context of the law or insurance. Mitigation was also commonly confused with mediation or “discussions with peers.”

Participants said “abrupt change” was the easiest to understand. In the context of climate change, the term refers to a change that’s so rapid and unexpected that humans have a hard time adapting to it.

Although participants had heard of “abrupt” and “change,” they were not necessarily aware of the terms being used together or their meaning in the climate context. Some defined it in terms of personal action, rather than broad changes to the environment.

Participants were also surprised to learn that “abrupt change” in the climate context may occur over centuries.

Participants were also asked to provide suggestions for alternative language. For example, for “tipping point,” which the IPCC defines as “an irreversible change in the climate system,” one respondent offered “too late to fix anything.”

“In several cases, the respondents proposed simple,

USC Sea Grant initiative “Storytime with a Scientist” teaches local students about the wonders of science.

When his classes went remote in Spring 2020, fifth-grade student Benjamin Santos felt that learning had lost its spark.

But after attending a Zoom session about the perseverance of Lonnie Johnson, inventor of the Super Soaker, he feels the spark has returned.

The meeting was part of USC Sea Grant’s monthly “Storytime with a Scientist” virtual learning series that allows students in the Los Angeles Unified School District to engage with scientists remotely.

An initiative of the Sea Grant enrichment program at USC Dornsife, “Storytime with a Scientist” aims to provide students from the communities surrounding USC and beyond with STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) experiences that pique their curiosity and encourage them to investigate and explore using scientific thinking.

Program leaders are helping the children see themselves as scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians, said Linda Anne Chilton, the education program coordinator for USC Sea Grant.

As part of the Sea Grant program, fifth-grade students developed and carried out experiments with the lab at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center on Santa Catalina Island to understand how plants gain mass.

This spring, middle schoolers developed bioengineered solutions using the adaptations they learned from studying intertidal life on the island, and high schoolers studied plastics and learned more about alternatives in the lab of Megan Fieser, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Chemistry.

Chilton said participants are “starting to think about themselves more as an engineer, an inventor or a designer,” rather than just as students.

She noted that there’s an element of social-emotional learning, as well. Students are learning ways to “express feelings and concern,” she said, “and tying it also to the natural world and what they’re exploring.” —T.R.

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 13

Our World FACULTY/STUDENTS Glasgow, Scotland

COP26

USC Dornsife faculty and students had front-row seats at the pivotal climate change meeting attended by global leaders and representatives from nearly 200 countries.

Billed as the “world’s last chance to get runaway climate change under control,” the Nov. 26 “Conference of the Parties,” or COP26, aimed to reach agreements to aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet and leading to a potentially calamitous future.

USC Dornsife was well represented, with faculty and students playing diverse roles.

Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology and Behavioral Science, presented findings from a USC Dornsife Public Exchange-UN Foundation study showing how easily people misunderstand common climate change terms.

The study aims to help climate scientists, policymakers and journalists communicate climate science more clearly so that nonexperts better understand the looming climate crisis and how to prevent it.

Joe Árvai, director of USC Dornsife’s Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies, attended COP26 as part of the delegation from the Global Council for Science and the Environment, which works to elevate the role of science in decision-making — a mission that dovetails with his own research. As a credentialed observer, Árvai, Dana and David Dornsife Chair and professor of psychology, briefed policymakers and assessed the latest approaches to protecting our environment.

Shannon Gibson, associate professor (teaching) of international relations and environmental studies, and her students attended COP26 virtually, as observers, to investigate how protests and grassroots activities impact language and communication about climate change at formal conferences such as COP26. —L.I.

Just a few blocks from a busy store, homes and a preschool in San Pedro, California, sit two tanks containing nearly 25 million gallons of butane gas. If a spill occurs, a single spark could ignite the highly combustible gas, detonating a massive explosion.

Nearby residents have unsuccessfully petitioned for the tanks’ removal since their installation in the 1970s.

Now, USC Dornsife biological sciences major Tim Saunders is joining the fight, thanks to an Environmental Health MethodologicAl, Trainings and Teaching EnterpriSE (EH MATTERS) fellowship provided by the USC Environmental Health Centers.

Funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the new fellowship gives students from underrepresented groups a chance to conduct research on environmental health and safety issues.

Saunders is building a case study of the tanks’ impact on the neighborhood and creating a website and infographics that will help others visualize the danger the tanks pose to the community.

His goal is to convince policymakers to take action.

“Being a man of color, EH MATTERS gave me a platform to speak for my community,” he says. —M.C.

STUDENTS Santa Catalina Island Each summer, the USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on Santa Catalina Island hosts students for nine weeks of hands-on research, lectures, field trips and mentorship from faculty.

Students scuba dive, snorkel and collect samples from the sea to understand and solve environmental problems.

Environmental studies students Erin Tharp, who enrolled in the Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates: Coastal Ocean Processes program, and Vineet Bhandari, a Zinsmeyer Summer Undergradute Program participant, created a baseline population count for the area’s sea cucumbers — marine animals essential to maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems.

This experience allowed Tharp to pursue her primary passion, scuba diving. “When you’re underwater, you feel one with nature instead of like an intruder,” says Tharp, who earned her diving certification through USC’s Scientific Diving Program.

Diving was also a draw for Bhandari, who earned his certification during his fellowship this summer, completing nearly 50 scientific dives — far more than the 12 needed for his certificate.

“You don’t get that same experience when you’re just in the classroom,” he says. “Once you go out [in the water], it’s a whole different immersive experience that you never imagined before.” —M.C.

COP 26 IMAGE COURTESY OF UKCOP 26

14

STUDENT San Pedro

FROM THE HE ART OF USC

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW Texas Mexico Border

F U T U R O C O N J U N T O IM AG E C O U R T E S Y O F F U T U R O C O N J U N T O ; U N D E R WAT E R P H O T O BY T Y L E R S C H IF F M A N; G R A Z I A N O P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F J O H N G R A Z I A N O

An imagined concert in an abandoned space rocket facility features in the multimedia music project created by incoming Assistant Professor of English Jonathan Leal and producer Charlie Vela. Set nearly 200 years in the future, the sci-fi themed album Futuro Conjunto imagines what’s to come in the borderlands between Mexico and Texas — and the songs that will commemorate these events.

“The spirit of the album was, let’s imagine a future together, a ‘futuro conjunto,’ ” says Leal, currently a USC Dornsife postdoctoral fellow.

To make music about the future, the duo first looked to the past. The region’s tradition of “corridos,” Spanishlanguage songs that memorialize events and local legends, served as a primary inspiration for the two musicians who both hail from the area.

“The album is a 21st-century look at possible futures for the region, and it’s directly informed by that local storytelling tradition,” says Leal.

The result is as much a warning about our present political and ecological trajectories as a musing upon the future of music. —M.C.

ALUMNUS Santa Catalina Island, Palau, Worldwide Conservation photographer and filmmaker Tyler Schiffman ’17 spent much of the past four years underwater (and sometimes out of it), shooting close-ups of animals worldwide for The New York Times, The Atlantic and Nature Conservancy Magazine.

“My goal is to raise awareness of conservation and humanitarian work,” Schiffman says. “Getting the word out to the public raises money for these nongovernmental organizations and can make a big difference.”

An environmental science and health major, Schiffman’s introduction to underwater photography came through USC Dornsife’s Environmental Studies program. There he gained certification as a scientific diver at the USC Wrigley Marine Science Center on Santa Catalina Island with David Ginsburg, professor (teaching) of environmental studies.

During Ginsburg’s “Problems Without Passports: Integrated Ecosystem Management” summer course in Palau in the western Pacific, Schiffman began considering a photography career after meeting an acquaintance of Ginsburg’s who had worked for National Geographic.

Back at USC, Schiffman minored in cinematic arts to gain technical proficiency.

He began photographing ocean life, especially small, delicate animals few people ever see. One of his images made the cover of The New York Times’ science section.

Schiffman recently branched out into filmmaking, with a documentary about a sea urchin diver.

“Other photographers said, ‘It's not the photos you take, it’s the stories you tell.’ I have found what I love: It’s being a storyteller,” he says. —M.M. and M.B.

Alumnus Tyler Schiffman uses his photography, like this shot of a seal in a kelp bed near Monterey, California, to promote conservation.

ALUMNUS France

The Globe Trotter

As the Fulbright program, which connects students in the United States with more than 160 partner countries worldwide, celebrates the 75th anniversary of its founding, we salute one of USC Dornsife’s earliest Fulbright Scholars.

John Graziano, who earned a B.A. in French in 1955, studied in France as a Fulbright Scholar in 1957 before returning to USC Dornsife to earn an M.A. in Slavic studies in 1972.

When Graziano’s professors at USC Dornsife encouraged him to apply for a Fulbright scholarship, he thought he would never get it.

“But lo and behold, I did get it. And it changed my whole life,” says Graziano, now 88.

His Fulbright to study French linguistics in Grenoble, France, opened the door to a lifetime of travel and provided the impetus to his future career as a language teacher.

He since traveled to more than 80 countries worldwide and taught French, Italian, Russian and Spanish at Los Angeles high schools, Los Angeles City College and California State University, Northridge.

Graziano also spent a couple of years living in Georgia in the then-Soviet Union before studying at Moscow University. He met family members in Italy and made many friends around the world.

“The Fulbright absolutely changed my world view. I gained a deep understanding of myself that I never would have had otherwise,” Graziano says. “I wish I had two or three lifetimes so that I could do it all again.” —S.B. Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 15

“Very shortly after the Big Bang, we believe there was a period when the expansion of the universe was highly accelerated. Right after that, all the particles that we know about — even those that may make us up — were created.”

— Elena Pierpaoli, professor of physics and astronomy

16

A Cosmic Conversation From the origins of the Big Bang to the composition of dark energy, dark matter and black holes, USC Dornsife cosmologists Vera Gluscevic and Elena Pierpaoli are searching for answers to the mysteries of the universe.

By Susan Bell In the last few decades, we have found answers to some of the biggest puzzles in astronomy and cosmology — thanks to the work of theoretical cosmologists like USC Dornsife’s Vera Gluscevic and Elena Pierpaoli, whose research aims to determine the composition and evolution of the universe.

However, while cosmologists worldwide have made huge strides in recent years with the help of advanced probes such as satellites and space telescopes, many of the deepest mysteries of the universe still remain to be solved.

Gluscevic, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, combines the tools of theoretical astrophysics, particle physics and astronomical data analysis to explore dark matter, dark energy and processes that shaped the universe before the time of the first stars. Her research involves coming up with new ways of using objects and phenomena that we see in our universe throughout cosmic history — observables from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation that comes to us almost from the time of the Big Bang to populations of dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way — in order to test the fundamental fabric of nature.

The primary research interests of Pierpaoli, professor of physics and astronomy, are the CMB and the large-scale structure of the universe, in particular galaxy clusters. She uses observations to understand fundamental physical principles, such as how gravity works on large scales and the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

Here, Gluscevic and Pierpaoli explain their research and discuss some of the recent breakthroughs in our understanding of the universe as well as cosmic conundrums, such as dark energy, dark matter and supermassive black holes, that still have cosmologists and astrophysicists scratching their heads.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE

VG: As physicists and cosmologists, we use the tools of physics to try to understand the physical laws that govern our universe on the largest of scales, through time and space. We know that our universe began with a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago. The universe started off small and very uniform, free of any lumps, bumps or structure.

EP: Very shortly after the Big Bang, we believe there was a period when the expansion of the universe was highly accelerated. Right after that, all the particles that we know about — even those that may make us up — were created.

VG: There were no galaxies at first, just clumps of matter that were denser than their surroundings. From that primordial soup is where our own galaxies that we see around us today eventually originated, emerging billions of years ago from tiny kernels of dark and normal matter.

EP: However, some very big questions about the origins of the universe still remain. For example, we know that at the center of most galaxies — including our own — there is a supermassive black hole.

Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the center of our own Milky Way, is equivalent to slightly more than 4 million solar masses. We don’t exactly know how such huge black holes form, but we think they are probably not primordial, but formed at later times during the history of the cosmos.

VG: When we look at the night sky, what’s incredible is that everything we see — all the stars, galaxies, us, the planets — accounts for maybe only a few percent of everything there is in our universe.

Cosmologists made a major breakthrough in the last few decades in understanding that our universe is made primarily of some new substances that we don’t yet understand — dark energy and dark matter. They’re very different from each other. We know they’re not made out of particles that we know and understand in particle physics and yet they decide what galaxies look like and what our universe is doing as a whole.

What I do is try to understand how we can use the smallest of galaxies that we see around us in the universe today to rewind this movie and understand what subatomic particles — particles that are even tinier than an atom — were doing at these very first moments after the Big Bang. In doing so, I try to understand dark matter and dark energy.

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 17

EP: As Vera said, the dominant energy density of the universe appears to be dark matter and dark energy. This is what we understand when we apply Einstein’s theory of relativity to interpret observations at all cosmological scales and distances. The validity of Einstein’s theory has been tested in the past on scales from our Earth to the solar system. However, it’s conceivable that the same laws don’t hold as we move to larger and larger scales, so that we need to modify Einstein’s theory.

Technological advancements of the past decades allowed us to observe many more distant, extragalactic objects.

Therefore, we now have the possibility of using these new and powerful observations to revise and test the law of gravity on a very large scale — something that was previously impossible, even when I was in grad school, because our observations back then simply weren’t powerful enough.

Such theoretical changes, of course, would also have implications for our understanding of the existence of dark matter and dark energy in our universe.

One of the questions that we aim at understanding better from our study of the CMB is how inflation occurred and how it seeded the ripples in densities that later created the structures — galaxies, stars, etc. — we observe around us.

VG: USC Dornsife’s Department of Physics and Astronomy is an institutional partner in the international Simons Observatory Collaboration to build the next generation of CMB telescopes in Chile’s Atacama Desert. This array of new-generation telescopes will help us observe the CMB in much greater detail than we’ve ever been able to before.

They may also provide information about possible new types of particles in our universe that we can’t see in any other way.

EP: And then there are other probes that are closer to us, typically, all the galaxies and structures that formed more recently. All those cosmological probes should point toward the same picture for the content, evolution and model of the universe, so part of our research is also to find the correct model that can match these very distant observables and those closer to us.

HOW TIME BEGAN

A BEAUTIFUL FOAM-LIKE STRUCTURE

VG: We understand spacetime and its evolution thanks to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which allowed us to figure out that there was a beginning of time. At that first moment, there was a massive expansion of the universe.

EP: It’s important to remember that the Big Bang isn’t why the universe formed, it’s how. If we imagine an explosion, we tend to think of some space where a bomb explodes, while the Big Bang essentially created space.

VG: To make this easier to understand, let’s think of our universe as a two-dimensional universe — it’s really four dimensional, but that’s harder to envision — and the space is expanding like the rubber surface of a balloon expands while being inflated.

This doesn’t mean that our universe expanded into something else, into some space that existed before it and around it. Spacetime — all of it, what we see and what we cannot yet see — began at that moment, and has been stretching and growing ever since.

OBSERVING THE HORIZON OF THE UNIVERSE

EP: As Vera said, we know our universe began at a certain moment in time. According to our knowledge of physics, information can travel only as fast as the speed of light.

This means we can only see up to a certain distance from us — what we call the horizon — which is the largest distance that could have been traveled by light from the beginning of time, in other words, from the Big Bang to now. This means there’s a limit to what we can assess because we can see only a given volume around us and not the entire universe. We don’t know if the universe is infinite, or if it has other boundaries or peculiarities beyond the horizon: If these exist, we cannot see them.

Despite our limitations in only being able to observe what is inside the horizon, there is a lot that we can learn from the volume of the universe that is within our reach. Some of the observed radiation — specifically the CMB radiation — was emitted close to the farthest edge of the horizon. Because the CMB radiation reaches us from very large distances and therefore we know it was emitted very early on, it informs us about moments in the history of the universe that were very close to the Big Bang. In this sense, the CMB is the most accurate probe of early universe physics, and studying it is very helpful in understanding what was happening back then.

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VG: Our universe currently has a lot of structure. Stars group into galaxies that group into larger collections of galaxies, sometimes clusters of galaxies. If you zoom out and look at our universe on the largest of scales, it resembles this beautiful foam-like structure of matter that forms big bubbles, with walls and filaments stretching between them. Wherever these filaments of matter cross, that’s where you find most of the galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

In global terms, we understand well enough how this structure forms to be able to program a computer to reproduce our universe by telling it how gravity works and then letting it figure out what the structure of the universe looks like today. The result is a good match for our observations, which means that our theory of gravity works fairly well — so long as we input the right amounts of matter.

Although I would say the universe is extremely orderly and is described by several laws of physics that we understand, it’s also disorderly in the sense that these laws reveal that there’s much more matter in the universe than the stars and galaxies.

They also reveal that the universe is doing this weird thing where it’s expanding faster and faster as time goes on, as if something is inflating it — something beyond the normal substances that we understand in standard physics.

THE DARK SIDE

EP: That brings us to dark energy — so-called because it typically doesn’t interact much with light, but it does not behave as dark matter in terms of ruling the universe’s expansion. It is the dominant component in the universe in terms of total energy density. At the moment, dark energy makes up 70%, maybe 25% is dark matter, and the remaining 3% to 5%, that’s the stars, us, everything that we’re used to envisioning when we think about the universe. So, dark energy is a very big deal indeed.

Then there’s dark matter, about which we also know very little. In fact, we just know one type of dark matter, the neutrino component — a neutral particle with a very small mass that rarely interacts with normal matter — which we’ve been able to calculate comprises less than 10% of dark matter.

VG: Evidence for both dark energy and dark matter comes from observations. There is six times more dark matter than normal matter in the universe and we’re confident that it isn’t any of the normal stuff we understand in particle physics.

IL L U S T R AT I O N S BY P E T E L LOY D F O R U S C D O R N S IF E M AG A Z IN E

“Dark energy is winning, it’s becoming the most dominant thing in our universe, the one that decides what our universe as a whole is doing.”

— Vera Gluscevic, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

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We do know that dark energy and dark matter don’t require each other. There are theories, certainly, that try to link them together, but they behave so differently. Dark matter behaves like normal matter in that when the universe expands, we end up with a lower density of it. Whereas dark energy behaves dramatically differently.

Let me explain. So, we all know that gravity pulls things together. The more massive you are, the more gravity you exert on other things. If I throw a ball up in the air, it goes up high, turns around and comes back down again. That’s how gravity works. If I throw it really hard, it will go farther up.

If I throw it with escape velocity — about 11 kilometers a second, the speed at which we launch rockets into interplanetary space — it’s going to break off from the gravitational grip of the Earth and continue floating into space with a constant velocity. What it’s never going to do is break off from that gravitational grip and then speed up more and more as it goes farther and farther away. This would be crazy, and yet that is exactly what our universe is doing.

At best, it should be just expanding with constant velocity, and, instead, the bigger it is, the faster it’s expanding. This is what dark energy is doing — it’s making the universe expand faster and faster.

Another weird thing that we now understand about dark energy is that unlike normal matter — which decreases in density when the volume of space increases — the density of dark energy remains the same when the volume of space increases. It’s almost as if the more space there is, the more of the stuff — whatever it is — there is. And so, dark energy is winning, it’s becoming the most dominant thing in our universe, the one that decides what our universe as a whole is doing.

A MATTER OF SOUL

EP: Why did I become a cosmologist? It was the intellectual challenge that drew me into this field when I was young, and even in my short life, I’ve lived through exciting changes.

Thanks to the data we can now access, cosmology has become one of the fastest evolving fields in physics.

Sometimes I’m asked, ‘What would you say to people who argue this research is a waste of time, energy and money?’

It’s true there’s no direct practical application for what we study, but our research does answer fundamental questions of humankind, questions that have preoccupied people since civilization began: What’s in the universe? Where are we in the universe? Was there a beginning and will there be an end? And so, in that sense, it is important because there’s also the soul — not only practical things are relevant.

I would also argue that I don’t think Edison and Tesla were actually thinking of lighting up the whole planet when they were discovering electricity. So, we never know!

VG: I totally second Elena’s Edison and Tesla argument.

In addition, our universe is so beautiful. At the same time, it’s completely mysterious. But while we don’t yet understand dark matter and dark energy, we do have the mathematical tools to explore and dig deeper and understand how our universe began, to know that there was a beginning and to figure out the age of it. It’s a whole field for exploration, so, to me, having those tools and that challenge is incredibly empowering.

After all, understanding the universe — who doesn’t want to do that?

Additional reporting by Stephen Koenig 20

How to Photograph a Furious Baby Experimental astrophysicist Amber D. Miller builds scientific instruments to explore the primordial universe when it was much less than one second old. By Stephen Koenig A Ph.D. student at Princeton University throttled her 4x4 down a rugged volcanic mountain in Chile’s high Atacama Desert. It was the late ’90s, and without rules or paved roads, the remote expanse of dramatic nature — salt flats teeming with flamingos and geysers that spew at sunrise — was an irresistible call to adventure.

At 17,000 feet above sea level, it also offered some of the best conditions on Earth for the young cosmologist, Amber D. Miller, to carry out her thesis project. Having built exceptionally sensitive telescopes and instruments, she and a small team conducted the first major scientific experiment ever in the arid region — and amassed some colorful stories to boot.

Now the area hosts an astrological park. There are safety protocols to follow, driving regulations and oxygen requirements. “When I became a professor, I was glad that all of these safeguards were in place,” says Miller. “But as a graduate student, it was a lot more fun.”

When you’re looking at light that comes from very far away, you are essentially looking back in time. And if you look far enough — almost 14 billion light years away — you can see the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This light, emitted shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 380,000 years old, is the oldest relic light remaining and contains a wealth of information about the nature of our universe. In observing this “baby picture” of the cosmos, Miller’s thesis experiment was the first to shed light on its geometry.

These days, she doesn’t get to spend much time conducting research in extreme environments or catching fresh trout with Chilean border patrol agents. Miller serves as dean of USC Dornsife.

And the small, intrepid teams of graduate students driving their own trucks through the Atacama Desert have given way to very large international CMB collaborations, building experiments with unprecedented sensitivity. According to the most popular Big Bang theory, unique and extraordinarily tiny signatures were imprinted on the CMB by gravitational waves emitted when the universe was much less than a second old.

These gravitational wave signatures are known as B-modes in the field, and, if detected, would shed light on the fundamental physics governing our universe and provide clues as to what set off the Big Bang. Today, Miller and her colleagues are pursuing this holy grail of cosmology.

“To detect B-modes, you need to custom-build instruments that have both truly amazing sensitivity and exquisite, unprecedented control of systematic errors,” Miller says.

In 2012, Miller’s team went to McMurdo Station in Antarctica to deploy EBEX, a 6,000-pound, high-altitude balloon-borne telescope that was seven years in the making (and whose test flight near Phoenix prompted frenzied claims of a UFO sighting).

While EBEX did not detect the B-mode signatures, there was a surprising outcome. Star cameras on board the experiment that were designed for navigation purposes serendipitously observed polar mesospheric

“The biggest question we’ve been asking throughout the history of humanity is ‘where did we all come from?’ ” clouds, an important tracer of atmospheric dynamics that can shed light on weather and climate models. This discovery has led to a new way to study these important tracers, and a new balloon-borne experiment, PMC-Turbo, that collected groundbreaking data in this field over the past couple of years.

There is good reason to believe that B-modes will be detected in the coming decades as telescopes continue to become more advanced. Miller says this breakthrough would not only provide rock-solid evidence for the inflationary event predicted by the Big Bang theory, but also unlock new insights about the fundamental origins of nature.

There is no immediate way in which this fundamental understanding will affect our daily lives, Miller notes.

“However, we didn’t know what good the discovery of quantum mechanics would do — but without it we wouldn’t have the modern electronics that govern almost every aspect of our lives,” she says.

Also, curiosity and the desire to explore and understand our world and our origins are among the most basic elements of being human. “The biggest question we’ve been asking throughout the history of humanity is ‘where did we all come from?’ ” Miller says.

And in case you’re wondering about the geometry of the universe … it’s flat.

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CHILDREN OF THE COSMOS: WHAT THE ANCIENTS KNEW We have been fascinated by the wonders of the universe and have endeavored to understand our place within it since our earliest ancestors first gazed up in awe at the night sky. So, how did ancient civilizations make sense of the cosmos — and what did they get right?

By Susan Bell In the spring of 1900, a group of Greek sponge divers, blown off course by a storm in the Aegean, stumbled upon the wreck of an ancient Roman ship loaded with treasure that had sunk more than 2,000 years earlier off the remote Greek island of Antikythera. Returning the following year to retrieve its precious cargo, the divers were forced to end their mission when one died of the bends and two were paralyzed — but not before they succeeded in bringing to the surface a spectacular haul of antiquities.

Among them were bronze and marble statues, fine jewelry and glassware, and — most exciting of all — a startlingly complex cosmological calculator: the Antikythera mechanism.

The world’s oldest analogue computer and one of the most remarkable scientific objects of antiquity ever found, the mechanical model of the solar system is thought to date to between the third and first centuries B.C. Now fractured into 82 known fragments, there is surviving evidence of 30 bronze gears. However, researchers believe this highly sophisticated device originally included at least 69 intricately engineered meshing gears that enabled the ancient Greeks to track the phases of the moon and the positions of the planets, and even to predict the timing of lunar eclipses decades in advance.

But if the Antikythera mechanism can be considered a

stunning embodiment of the ancient Greeks’ impressive grasp of astronomy, it drew heavily upon the learning of a much earlier civilization in its use of the 19-year lunisolar cycle.

“The device exemplifies a terrific achievement of synthesis in incorporating complex bodies of observational and theoretical knowledge, much of it deriving ultimately from the Babylonian tradition, and long preceding Greek interests in astronomy,” says USC Dornsife’s Lucas Herchenroeder, associate professor (teaching) of classics.

Considered the world’s first-known astronomers, the ancient Babylonians were avid stargazers. Some 6,000 years ago, they erected watch towers to scan the night sky, mapped the stars and visible planets and recorded their observations on clay tablets. Their meticulously compiled data provided the foundation to create the first calendars, used to organize the growing and harvesting of crops and the timing of religious ceremonies.

Although their vision of the universe was based on mythological beliefs, the Babylonians’ astronomical observations and predictions were astoundingly accurate.

They were the first-known people to predict eclipses. They could track and predict the relative movements of the sun, the moon, Mercury and Venus. And — like the ancient Egyptians — they successfully calculated the length of a year.

How did ancient civilizations accomplish these feats of knowledge without the benefit of telescopes, satellites or computer technology?

The old-fashioned way: through careful observation, generational record-keeping, pattern recognition and early mathematics. Here we explore what they got right — and wrong — about the cosmos.

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THE WORLD WAS THEIR OYSTER

If the Babylonians’ astronomical calculations were remarkably precise by modern standards, their understanding of the cosmos was very far removed from our own. As Arthur Koestler explains in his seminal history of Western cosmology, The Sleepwalkers, the first ancient civilizations — the Babylonians, Egyptians and Hebrews — conceived of their universe as an oyster surrounded by water.

The Babylonian sky was a solid dome through which moisture sometimes seeped as rain, Koestler writes, while the waters below burst to the surface in the form of natural springs, and each day the sun, moon and stars performed a slow, ritual dance across its ceiling, entering from the east and exiting to the west.

As for the ancient Egyptian universe, it was more rectangular and box-like. At first, they conceived of their sky as a cow, one foot planted squarely at each corner of the Earth, or alternatively as a woman resting on her hands and knees.

Later, they likened it to a vaulted metal lid.

The sun and moon gods, they believed, sailed along a river that flowed upon an elevated gallery around the box’s inner walls.

Early Greek cosmology followed similar concepts: Homer’s world resembles a floating disc surrounded by Oceanus — the great mythical river, that encircled the world. But as time unfolded, the tremendous advances made by the ancient Greeks in figuring out how the universe is structured propelled them to become the driving force behind the development of Western astronomy and science.

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HELIOCENTRIC VERSUS GEOCENTRIC

Considered one of the greatest astronomers of antiquity, Aristarchus of Samos (310 B.C. to 230 B.C.) was responsible for the earliest-known heliocentric theory of the solar system, placing the sun at the center of the known universe, with the Earth revolving around the sun once a year and rotating about its axis once a day. Describing the sun as the “central fire” of the cosmos, he succeeded in correctly mapping all the then-known planets in order of distance around it.

Unfortunately for Aristarchus and the evolution of astronomical knowledge, Aristotle and most of the ancient Greek thinkers rejected his heliocentric theory. Instead, the Earth-centered model of the universe developed by Claudius C

Ptolemy of Alexandria in A.D. 140 prevailed, dominating Western thinking for nearly 1,400 years until it was finally toppled in the 16th century by Renaissance astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus.

Apart from its longevity, Ptolemy’s geocentric model frankly didn’t have much going for it, being not only incorrect but also mind-bogglingly complex. Indeed, it was so convoluted that, after having it explained to him, Alfonso X, the 13th-century King of Castile, was famously reported to have remarked, “If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon Creation, I should have recommended something simpler.”

GETTING IT RIGHT — SOMETIMES

While Hipparchus of Nicaea (190 B.C. to 120 B.C.) is credited with discovering and measuring the Earth’s precession and the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog of the Western world, Aristarchus made the earliest-known attempted calculations of the relative sizes of the sun and the moon and their distances from Earth.

He reasoned that the sun, Earth and moon would form a right-angled triangle when the moon is in its first or third quarter. Using the theorem developed a few centuries earlier by Pythagoras — the earliest proponent of the then-radical idea that the Earth was round — Aristarchus calculated (wrongly, it turns out) that the distance from Earth to the sun was between 18 and 20 times the distance to the moon. (The actual ratio is 389:1.) Based on careful timing of lunar eclipses, he also estimated that the size of the moon was approximately one-third that of Earth. There he was surprisingly accurate — the moon’s diameter measures 0.27 times that of the Earth.

The Greeks even came close to correctly calculating Earth’s circumference, thanks to Eratosthenes (276 B.C. to 195 B.C.), chief librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Aristarchus had shown that the sun is sufficiently far from Earth that its rays are effectively parallel by the time they reach us. Eratosthenes used varying lengths of shadows, cast by poles stuck vertically into the ground at different latitudes and measured at midday on the summer solstice, to estimate the Earth’s circumference as approximately 250,000 stades.

“As the length of stadia varied regionally, the exact length of the unit used by Eratosthenes is uncertain. But his estimate fell within a range of error of roughly 1% to 17% of today’s accepted value of 24,901 miles — still an impressive achievement,” Herchenroeder says.

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Many other ancient civilizations also developed sophisticated systems for observing and interpreting the cosmos, using this knowledge to enhance their lives.

Ancient Polynesians learned to use the stars to navigate thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, enabling them to colonize distant islands, including the Hawaiian Islands.

The ancient Egyptians carefully tracked the rising time of the bright star Sirius, whose yearly cycle corresponded with the flooding of the River Nile which they relied upon to sustain their crops.

Ancient European megalithic sites aligned to solstices and equinoxes and going back to Neolithic societies stretch up the Atlantic Coast. Two of the best known, Stonehenge in England and Newgrange in Ireland, were already ancient when the pyramids were built and were the largest human-made structures anywhere in the world.

THE VENUS DETECTIVES

Probably the best-known of the classical civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Maya developed a sophisticated calendar based on their astronomical observations.

“Indigenous people all across the Americas were incredible observers of their universe. They had a very astute understanding of natural processes and the world, the movement of time, stars and calendrics,” says Eric Heller, lecturer in anthropology at USC Dornsife and an expert on Maya cosmology and ideology.

The Maya may have originated on the Pacific Coasts of what are today southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as the Yucatán, around 2600 B.C. and rose to prominence between 200 B.C. and A.D. 900. The Maya cosmos consisted of three distinct realms, Heller explains.

Beneath their feet lay the underworld, Xibalba, a dark and watery place. Above them were the 13 levels of the upper world, the realm of celestial bodies — gods and deceased ancestors responsible for the operation of the universe.

In between, the terrestrial realm was divided into four corners, roughly corresponding to our cardinal directions and marked by the movement of the sun across the horizon

S O U R C E: L IB R A RY O F C O N G R E S S; T H I S PAG E: N AV I G AT I O N A L C H A R T P H O T O BY J IM H E A P H Y; D E N D R A T E M P L E IM AG E S O U R C E: W IK I C O M M O N S; S T O N E H E N G E P H O T O: I S T O C K

FINDING MEANING IN THE STARS

Tok Thompson, professor (teaching) of anthropology at USC Dornsife, disagrees with speculation that megalithic sites like Stonehenge were giant observatories, built so that ancient civilizations could figure out the movements and cycles of the planets, the sun and the moon.

“These monuments were ritual enactments, monumentalizing what they already knew,” he says.

They also helped societies keep track of time.

“Before there were widespread calendars to connect people, how do you keep a civilization together?” Thompson asks. “Having large festival gatherings at these ritualistically important spots that were anchored in the cosmos, which probably gave them sacred meaning, was one way to do this.

It allowed people to memorialize their culture and — most importantly — gave them a place in the cosmos. “ ‘Why am I here? What happens when I die?’ Our focus on the stars has societal implications, but I think it also has personal implications. It’s about giving our lives meaning.”

P R E V I O U S PAG E: M O D E L BY U C L A N T I K Y T H E R A R E S E A R C H T E A M , © 2 0 2 1 T O N Y F R E E T H; B A BY L O N I A N U N I V E R S E I M AG E S O U R C E: W I K I C O M M O N S ; C O S M O G R A P H I A BY B A R T O L O M E U V E L H O ; A R I S TA R C H U S D I AG R A M I M AG E

USING SCIENCE TO OVERCOME SUPERSTITION

This deep fascination with the ability to make astronomical calculations is manifested in the Antikythera mechanism, Herchenroeder notes.

“The mechanism’s focus on predicting celestial motion demonstrates awareness of the possibilities of demystifying knowledge of the cosmos many regarded as divine in nature, and hence beyond the normal scope of human understanding,” he says. “We have interesting accounts of prediction of lunar eclipses, for example — one of the things this object presumably was able to do.”

One such account relates how on the eve of the Battle of Pydna between Rome and Macedon in 168 B.C., both armies were rattled by a lunar eclipse, considering it a bad omen. Cicero recounts how a Roman officer familiar with astronomy explained that an eclipse is a natural event, not a sign of divine disfavor, thus dispelling “empty superstition and fear.” The Romans went on to win the battle — a major milestone in their conquest of the Aegean world.

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throughout the year, from solstice to equinox and back again.

While the Maya, like many ancient peoples, lived their lives in accordance with the cycles and rhythms of the universe, they also placed tremendous emphasis on the correlation between time and space, believing that the purpose of humanity was to count the days of creation and maintain the sacred calendars of the cycles of time.

The most outstanding evidence for this is the 11thor 12th-century Dresden Codex. Opening accordion-style to extend 12 feet, its pages are tightly packed with Maya hieroglyphs recording accurate astronomical tables thought to be based on thousands of years of observational knowledge.

“The Maya tracked Venus, which has an incredibly complex motion across the horizon, over generations so they could predict when it would appear in the sky because they considered it a dangerous omen that could herald war, illness or death,” Heller says.

The Codex also contains remarkably accurate tables enabling solar eclipses across Earth to be predicted within a three-day window, and indefinitely into the future. In 1991, two noted Maya scholars, Harvey and Victoria Bricker, used the Dresden Codex to predict a solar eclipse to the day — at least 800 years after the tables were compiled.

AN ANIMIST VIEW

DRESDEN CODE X AND CIPAC TLI IMAGE SOURCE: WIKICOMMONS

Most American Indigenous cultures understood their world from the perspective of animism, and the Maya were no exception. Looking up, they saw a world of stars, planets and clouds that lived and moved through the sky and were manifestations of their ancestors, who they believed were playing a major role in the operation of their universe.

“These civilizations felt a connection between stars, the sun and the moon, the clouds in the sky,” Heller says.

“Everything they saw around them, even the things they touched and used every day, they felt kinship with on some level — something often lost in our modern, postEnlightenment world.”

Heller acknowledges that the Maya’s unique way of knowing and representing the world appears strange to us.

But in fact, he argues, when we dig deep to unpack and understand these metaphorical representations of natural processes and the cosmos itself, we find a tremendous amount of knowledge.

“It’s expressed in radically different ontology but in fact it’s the product of deep observational knowledge — the kind of stuff that we might think of as quite scientific in a sense,” he says.

One example is the ancient Mesoamerican metaphor for the Earth: a crocodile floating upon a watery underworld whose breath, flowing in and out of cave mouths, brought rain.

“At first glance, I think a lot of people would say, ‘Well, the Earth’s not a crocodile; this doesn’t make sense,’ ” Heller says.

“‘Why am I here? What happens when I die?’

Our focus on the stars has societal implications, but I think it also has personal implications.

It’s about giving our lives meaning.”

“But, in fact, there’s a tremendous amount of water beneath Mesoamerica. And the Earth-crocodile’s exhalations bringing rain essentially describes changes in barometric pressure and the arrival of rain-bringing weather systems.”

MEASURING UP

So, how does the Maya’s knowledge about the universe measure up to our own?

“The Maya got a tremendous amount right about what was around them,” Heller says. “They understood how their universe worked, and they had a tremendously effective set of metaphors for expressing the operation of the world processes that dictated in many ways the successes and failures of their lives.”

Cavan Concannon, associate professor of religion, agrees, noting that ancient peoples developed ways of navigating their place in the universe with what they had available to them.

“I think in some ways they were also writing themselves into the story of the cosmos. Part of knowing your place is also knowing who you are and why you are in a universe the way it is,” Concannon says.

“And so, I’m not certain that it’s a question of whether they got it right or wrong. Contemporary science is, itself, a constantly evolving conversation and at some point, everything that we thought we knew about the universe is going to change. The ancients made their way through the universe in a way that made sense to them and lived their lives in that context. I think we’re still doing that.”

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INDEX

A: An exploded view of the Antikythera mechanism.

B: Image of the Babylonian universe.

C: Illustration of the Ptolemaic conception of the universe from Cosmographia, by Bartolomeu Velho, 1568.

D: Diagram of the moon, Earth and sun (from top to bottom) in a 1572 edition of Aristarchus’ On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon.

E: A navigational chart from the Marshall Islands made of wood, sennit fiber and cowrie shells.

F: Astronomical ceiling at the Dendera Temple, one of the best-preserved temple sites from Ancient Upper Egypt.

G: Stonehenge on winter solstice with Milky Way. H: The Dresden Codex, one of the oldest surviving books written in the Americas.

I: Cipactli (crocodile) from the Codex Borgia.

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CELESTIAL INSPIRATION Our sense of wonder at the cosmos, and our desire to try to make sense of our place within it, have inspired generations of artists, writers, designers, musicians and filmmakers. By Darrin S. Joy

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Across much of Earth, pervasive light pollution now makes seeing most of them virtually impossible, but they are out there. Billions of them, pinpricks of light burning unfathomable distances from a blue and white marble orbiting a yellow dwarf star on the outskirts of a spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. Travel into the wild, away from populated areas, and we can see what our ancestors saw and share their sense of awe: countless jewels visible to the naked eye sparkling against the night sky, with the moon often dominating the view as it transitions through its phases from near invisible to a crescent shape to a luminous full disc and back again.

This view, and the possibilities it represents, have inspired some of humanity’s greatest artists to explore and express our sense of mystical wonder at the cosmos — and try to make sense of our place within it — through the arts and popular culture.

AN ENCHANTING VIEW

Gazing out of his asylum room window in Saint-Rémy-deProvence in southern France, Vincent van Gogh was struck by those sparkling lights in the night sky.

“This morning I saw the countryside from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star,

which looked very big,” he wrote in a letter to his brother.

Whether he knew it or not, van Gogh was looking into space, seeing the planet Venus (the “morning star”) against a background of distant suns. This view of the night sky — and certainly his struggle with mental illness — led him to create one of the most famous portraits of the cosmos known to humankind.

“It’s this mysterious beauty and this really intense contemplation of the sky,” says Amy Ogata, professor of art history at USC Dornsife. “And that’s something probably that many people can identify with, of looking up and seeing these stars.”

Ogata’s assertion appears to be spot on, based on the popularity of the painting. The Starry Night, which van Gogh completed in 1889, is one of the most popular images in the world, captivating millions and appearing on everything from key chains to calendars to T-shirts and, of course, walls.

But it’s also something more. “What he has painted is not something that we would see if we were just going out to look up to the sky,” says Ogata. “He’s painted something that’s so super personal, this vision of this roiling sky that is flickering with this halo around this gibbous moon. … And then this kind of swirl that we could interpret as wind, as cloud, as reflected light, as emotion.”

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It’s not a simple documentation of the artist’s view out of a window, she says. Much of it is made up.

Van Gogh doesn’t mention the moon in his note to his brother, only the morning star. And Ogata says the view from his asylum probably didn’t include a small village, or a church with a tall steeple, or a large cypress tree.

While inspired by his view of the night sky, the image is one of the artist’s making, his interpretation of what he sees in the heavens above him driven by his post-impressionist fascination with night and a near obsessive devotion to color.

And what more could we expect? It’s not as if he could travel into space for a closer look.

That would come later, as humanity’s ability to venture outside Earth’s atmosphere progressed over the next 70 years, in the process sparking the creative imaginations of writers, filmmakers, musicians and even fashion designers — all eager to imagine what the universe might hold.

EARLY EXPLORATION

Science fiction as a distinct genre, and in particular the notion of traveling into space to visit other worlds, began to emerge during the Enlightenment. Scientific advances in physics and astronomy changed how humans viewed their world and its place in the universe. Earth was no longer at the center. Rather, it was one celestial body among many moving around a star and through the larger void of space.

For early science fiction writers, the moon — the closest extraterrestrial destination — was the obvious first stop when venturing into space.

German astronomer Johannes Kepler, a giant of scientific history responsible for foundational breakthroughs in our understanding of the motion of planets around the sun, penned what may be the first example in 1608. His novel, Somnium (Latin for The Dream), tells of a demon who can transport humans to the moon. The tale addresses various scientific concepts, including the transition from Earth’s gravity to the moon’s.

Two decades later, English historian and bishop Francis Godwin wrote The Man in the Moone, in which the protagonist builds a flying machine powered by swans that carries him to the lunar surface. This story, too, draws on the burgeoning astronomical theories of Kepler and other scientists.

Perhaps best known among early space-travel tales is French writer Jules Verne’s 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes, and its sequel, Around the Moon. The tales describe how the characters employ a massive canon to fire them at the moon in a large, 28

hollow projectile.

Verne’s science fiction and adventure novels inspired several early motion pictures, including Georges Méliès’ 1902 masterpiece, A Trip to the Moon. The film, considered by many to be among the greatest ever made, pioneered deeply innovative special visual effects and produced one of the most iconic images in the history of cinema: a space capsule landing in the moon’s eye.

Space also inspired what is widely considered the worst movie ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Shot in black and white in 1956, it features the final screen appearance by actor Bela Lugosi, though the footage of the faded celebrity had been shot for another movie and inserted into Plan 9, presumably to give it some star power. As for the plot, well, never mind.

THE GOLDEN AGE

Despite these remarkable early fictional endeavors, it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that stories of space adventure hit their stride. Inspired by earlier scientific advances — quantum theory, Einstein’s theory of relativity and the emergence of atomic energy — that all but guaranteed humans would soon find a way into outer space, writers such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon and Frederick Pohl ushered in the Golden Age of science fiction. Joined later by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson and Philip K. Dick, these futurists and fantasists enthralled readers with their tales of deep space exploration, alien encounters, mysterious cosmic phenomena and alternate universes.

But for all their futuristic settings and devices, these stories bear roots in a seemingly simpler, and uniquely American, tradition, according to University Professor Leo Braudy, professor of English, art history and history at USC Dornsife.

“I think it’s very much connected to the whole idea of the West,” he says. Like classic Western tales, stories of space travel embody the desire to escape to or explore an untamed, sometimes terrifying but also hopeful land, he explains, just as European settlers had been doing since shortly after they arrived on the shores of America’s East Coast.

“The idea of open space, the idea of somehow finding this place to build in, that you can restart civilization or, on the other hand, find monsters. There’s an interesting connection … in terms of popular culture between stories about the West and stories about outer space,” says Braudy, who holds the Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature.

To affirm this connection to the American West, one need

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“There’s an interesting connection … in terms of popular culture between stories about the West and stories about outer space.”

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only look to one of pop culture’s most revered sci-fi phenomena, he notes. “That’s what Star Trek said: ‘Space, the final frontier,’ right?”

SPACING OUT

By the 1960s, as humanity inched closer to the moon and experienced the breathless excitement of witnessing man’s first steps on its surface, the idea of a real future in space had infused the zeitgeist.

The Space Age changed the way designers looked at the world, influencing architecture, cars, furniture, appliances and fashion.

Paris fashion designers of the period, among them Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne and the so-called “godfather of SpaceAge fashion,” André Courrèges, began to imagine a future among the stars. Who could forget those groovy flat ankle — or thigh-high — patent leather boots; chin-strap space bonnets; and minimalist silver mini dresses? Their influence has not abated, with leading designers such as Nicolas Ghesquière for Louis Vuitton and Raf Simons continuing the trend well into the new millennium.

According to Professor of Art History and History Vanessa Schwartz, author of Jet Age Aesthetic: The Glamour of Media in Motion (Yale University Press, 2020), the stage had already been set for the futuristic fantasies associated with the Space Age by the advent of jet travel.

“A Jet Age aesthetic developed in which the jet’s smooth and quiet ride extended to life on the ground in a variety of spaces and media experiences, such as newly redesigned airports, at Disneyland, and in the bright photos that circulated abundantly in news and fashion magazines,” says Schwartz, director of USC Dornsife’s Visual Studies Research Institute.

“People in the Jet Age lived as though the future had already arrived in the present, rather than dreaming of futuristic scenarios and styles.”

The cosmos also enthralled another group of artists: musicians. During World War I, British composer Gustav Holst wrote the innovative and influential orchestral suite, The Planets. Half a century later, popular music also found inspiration in the idea of space, particularly among those exploring the frontiers of their genre. Rock icon David Bowie, with his legendary “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars,” jumped to the fore just as the Apollo missions finally put humans on the moon. And his iconic album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars would fully embrace the aesthetic with several spaceinfluenced titles. Bowie displayed a lifelong fascination with

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the cosmos, with his final studio album — released two days before his death in 2016 — titled Blackstar.

Other musicians — Elton John with his mournful ode to the “Rocket Man,” Pink Floyd exploring The Dark Side of the Moon and dozens more (too many to list) — shared Bowie’s fascination as space exploration proved an enduring inspiration.

PUT IT ON SCREEN

As Hollywood began to translate science fiction stories to the big and small screens, visual appeal became an important component. Images of iridescent nebulae, stars streaked by “warp fields” and twin suns setting behind a planetary ring play to the eye, often with great success.

But some viewers look for something deeper.

For Nicholas Warner, the most appealing fictional explorations of the cosmos focus on the characters, on how they address the unknown or unexpected, on how they problem-solve.

Professor of physics and astronomy and mathematics at USC Dornsife, Warner studies black holes. He grew up watching Doctor Who, the long-running (nearly 60 years!)

BBC television sci-fi series depicting a “Time Lord” who travels through space and time. The show proved to be a key influence in his life.

“I knew I was going to be a scientist probably from the age of seven,” he says. “There was one thing that really reinforced it: Doctor Who. “Here was a cool guy who went around figuring out how to solve problems, never used a weapon, and always outsmarted everybody.”

Warner, who occasionally serves as a science consultant in Hollywood, laments the sacrifice of thoughtfulness in favor of dazzling imagery. He cites 2014’s Interstellar as an example.

“So much of that movie and the essential plotting was driven by the visuals and not by any form of common sense.”

So, which movie gains the approval of a scientist like Warner?

“The Martian,” he says. “The fidelity of the science is great.

You’re with the protagonist and he’s solving problems.”

In other words, it inspires us, not so much because it’s about space, but because of how we humans interact with it.

This ultimately rings true for all our cosmically inspired forays in creativity, be they Space-Age design, literary moonshots, great works of art, musical musings or visual flights of cinematic fancy. At their heart lies the human factor — our primal desire to push to the frontiers and beyond by challenging the limits of our Earth-bound existence through our imagination.

INDEX A The Starry Night by

Vincent Van Gogh.

B The Man in the Moone

by Francis Godwin, Bishop of Hereford.

C A Trip to the Moon by

Georges Méliès.

D 1960s Space-Age fashion

designed by Pierre Cardin.

E Cover art for Pink Floyd’s

The Dark Side of the Moon

by George Hardie.

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With many countries, companies and individuals intensifying their space exploration programs, questions about rights, ownership and the feasibility of manned space missions are coming to the fore of public debate.

By Meredith McGroarty In early 1610, Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei wrote a letter to Cosimo de’ Medici — then Grand Duke of Tuscany — stating that he had observed four moons of Jupiter (which Galileo initially believed to be stars) using his improved telescope lens. Hoping to secure the grand duke’s patronage, Galileo proposed naming the bodies after Cosimo’s family, eventually calling them the “Medicea Sidera,” or the Medicean stars. (In the end, the moons were named for four lovers of the god Zeus: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.)

Galileo was not the first to claim stars in the name of people on Earth, and he was to be far from the last. Although the names of celestial bodies are now determined by the International Astronomical Union using a systematic naming system, the idea that outer space is terra incognita, a place yet unexplored or claimed, where everything is up for grabs, is more powerful today than ever before.

Countries, companies and even individuals are all sizing up the expanse beyond Earth’s atmosphere as a place of nebulous possibility: a potential source of minerals, a new space to further national interests or even a place for future habitation. But how we end up exploring space will be defined not just by ambition and competition, but by scientific realities that argue in favor of advanced telescopes, and robotic astronauts over ones made of flesh and blood.

NATIONAL PROJECTIONS

The modern space era took flight in October 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. The event had immediate repercussions back on Earth. Alarmed by the Soviets’ technological prowess and its ramifications for their military strength, the United States accelerated not only its space program but also its weapons capability, shifting the Cold War into high gear.

Ever since, outer space has been the backdrop for a human melodrama that has exposed our best and worst traits. For decades, astronauts and scientists from around the world have worked together to unlock the mysteries of space.

Nowhere is that cooperation more evident than with the International Space Station (ISS). Launched 23 years ago,

the ISS has been as much a political as a technological marvel. The U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada jointly operate the space station, while astronauts from 19 countries have visited the orbital laboratory.

More recently, the long-awaited advent of space tourism has started to unfold. Actor William Shatner, who, as Captain James T. Kirk on the iconic television series Star Trek, piloted the U.S.S. Enterprise as it boldly went where no man (or woman) had gone before, recently became the oldest man to fall to Earth thanks to a private rocket ride aboard the Blue Origin suborbital capsule — the space tourism project developed and financed by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

But the final frontier has also played host to national ambitions that reflect an ongoing jockeying for power among some of the world’s most powerful nations.

Whereas the space race was once a two-country event between the U.S. and the Soviets, it is now multipolar, with China, India and other nations investing heavily in space exploration in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Currently, 72 nations have government space programs, with capabilities ranging from satellite operation to full launch of spacecraft.

“We are all ramping up our ambition,” says Robert English, associate professor of international relations, Slavic languages and literatures and environmental studies at USC Dornsife. “In the U.S., we have rovers on Mars, we’ll be launching the [James] Webb space telescope soon and the Lunar Gateway will eventually serve as a spaceport for manned exploration of the moon, Mars and maybe beyond.

China has moon and Mars rovers, too, plus the Heavenly Palace Space Station, while Russia continues a smaller though active space program of its own.”

And while collaborative projects, such as the ISS, have aimed to foster a sense of scientific cooperation rather than competition, terrestrial political alliances and divisions certainly carry over into space, English notes. In June, Russia threatened to pull out of the ISS and build its own space station if the U.S. didn’t drop sanctions on its space program and the microchips it needed to launch its rockets.

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“What if we didn’t think about space in terms of ownership at all?”

(Officials reportedly later said such a withdrawal would not happen.) More worrisome to the U.S. are Chinese or Russian anti-satellite capabilities, English says. Meanwhile, those two countries are worried about America’s Space Force and secretive space plane project.

Does such maneuvering signal that space is poised to become a new arena for national turf wars, or does it represent little more than empty political point-scoring? The reality is probably somewhere between the two, English says. Looking at China’s space program as an extension of its Belt and Road initiative to foster international relationships through joint infrastructure programs on Earth, rather than as a sign of some looming interplanetary imperial ambition, for example, helps avoid alarmist interpretations of the situation.

“We swing from complacency to hysteria, and maybe the proper reaction is somewhere in the middle,” English says.

“There’s no doubt that what other countries are doing and how we perceive what they’re doing are two different things, and both are strongly colored by our relationship on Earth.”

English is concerned these exaggerated reactions to other nations’ space projects could create a hostile international environment similar to the nuclear arms race of the 1950s and ’60s, with countries loading up their budgets with spacebased weapons and defense systems. Meanwhile, the Outer Space Treaty, to which 111 nations are parties and another 23 are signatories, places some limits on military activities in space but is much vaguer on issues such as space mining and ownership of resources.

“If nations have a confrontational attitude, we will quickly be bumping into each other and saying, ‘No, I claimed that first. Who says you can claim this? No, we don’t agree to that part of the treaty, we didn’t sign that annex,’ ” English says.

“We need a conference of at least the leading space powers to figure out the likeliest points of friction and work out the rules of the road.”

FOR ALL OR FOR NONE?

While a handful of countries and wealthy individuals are flexing their cosmic muscles, the fact is that space really belongs to everyone — or perhaps to no one, says Andrea Ballestero, associate professor of anthropology. The idea of space being an open field, full of unowned things that can belong to the first to claim them, is a dangerous echo of the tenets behind the so-called Age of Exploration, when European powers laid claim to lands in, among other places, the Americas and Australia.

Being a billionaire or a powerful nation are not traits that confer entitlement to outer space, Ballestero argues. Rather than focus on the concept of astronomical bodies and objects as potential property, she suggests, individuals, companies and nations should view space similarly to entities like oceans — places that don’t have an owner but are regulated through many international treaties.

“The blueprint is to put aside the idea that this is about who claims private property, and instead adopt the framework that this is a collective problem or a collective possibility, one which cannot be reduced to the interests of one player,” Ballestero says. “We can deal with that as a global community.”

THE OUTER LIMITS

While one can speculate about the chances of Russia — or billionaire and space entrepreneur Richard Branson — establishing a colony on Mars or setting up a mining base on the moon, the health implications for the human body of 32

long-duration exposure to the hazards of space make such speculative projects highly unlikely to come to fruition, at least for the foreseeable future, says Kenneth Phillips, adjunct professor of the practice of physics and astronomy at USC Dornsife and curator for aerospace science at the California Science Center.

Beyond low Earth orbit, astronauts are exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation, placing them at higher risk for cancer and cardiovascular disease. Meanwhile, in a microgravity environment, the body’s fluids tend to redistribute themselves uniformly, which can cause problems with rapid fluid loss and even result in deformation of the eyes.

Microgravity itself is correlated with loss of muscle mass, which can affect heart health and bone density, among other things. Finally, there’s the issue of time: Even if humans were capable of traveling to Jupiter in spacecraft far more advanced than what we have now, such a trip might take at least five years, meaning an astronaut would need to devote a decade of their life just to getting to and from the mission site.

Experts in the field agree on the importance of space exploration — an endeavor that requires a relatively small portion of our country’s budget and has been the impetus for many revolutionary inventions. However, as astrophysicist and USC Dornsife Dean Amber D. Miller notes, the astrophysics and planetary science communities agree that manned space travel is impractical due to the vast timescales, the radiation environment in our solar system and the astronomical expense. Space exploration should be done primarily using robotics and advanced telescopes — the only way to study space outside our solar system. Robotic probes, such as NASA’s Juno probe and the Mars exploration rovers, are a safer and more efficient way to study the environment within our own solar system.

Although the argument for manned space flight anywhere beyond the orbit of Earth is very weak from a scientific standpoint, it remains popular among the general public — something governments have eagerly encouraged. More than a few Russian-language posters from the 1960s mention the “glory” that Soviet cosmonauts brought to the USSR, with at least one featuring a moon or planet bearing the Soviet Union’s Russian abbreviation “CCCP” stamped on it.

Meanwhile, the image of astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong planting the American flag on the moon during the 1969 landing is one of the most iconic of the era.

As Phillips notes, maintaining broad public support for space programs is important to preserve NASA funding.

“Try to imagine other areas of scientific research in which the public is as emotionally invested as space exploration,” Phillips says. “You need to make sure that you have a base of the population that says, ‘Yes, NASA’s work is worth doing.’ ” For that reason, some manned space flights are likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

UNDERSTANDING THE COSMOS

Humanity’s desire to solve the mysteries of space is unlikely ever to fade, nor will our attempts to explore, catalogue, photograph and understand the cosmos. Ballestero says that while people on Earth may try to claim this rock or that star in the name of their country, company or selves, we need to resist the urge to divide up space materials like so many spoils.

“What if we didn’t think about space in terms of ownership at all?” she suggests. “It doesn’t belong to anybody, but that doesn’t mean a group of humans should try to appropriate it.”

Because after all, who says we’re even alone out there?

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Is There Anyone Out There?

For many scientists, it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when” we encounter alien life.

So, what will happen when humans finally do come face-to-face with E.T.?

By Margaret Crable

Twenty years from now we might get a call from aliens.

In 2017, a powerful radio transmission was aimed at exoplanet GJ 273b, thought to be able to support life.

Its message, sent by the alien-hunting group Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International, contained instructions on how to understand Earthling math, music and time. If it lands on intelligent alien ears once it arrives in about a decade, E.T. now has our number.

Of course, a cosmic call might come much sooner. Space transmissions hoping to attract an alien response have been going out since 1962, when Soviet scientists sent a message in Morse code to the planet Venus in the first attempt at intergalactic communication.

Even if our calls generate no response, it seems increasingly likely humanity will stumble upon life somewhere in the universe one of these days. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful telescope ever sent into the cosmos, is scheduled to launch this winter and will enable scientists to examine thousands of distant planets for “biosignatures” — clues that a planet’s atmosphere has been influenced by life.

Concerns over decades of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — known more commonly as unidentified flying objects (UFOs) — in our atmosphere, many sighted by military personnel, have recently prompted politicians on both sides of the aisle to push for an official agency to handle UAP investigations.

But are we prepared for an encounter of the “Third Kind”?

The prospect of meeting another civilization raises questions both captivating and concerning. How do we even communicate with an alien species, especially one that may not use language in a form we can recognize and decipher? Will a meeting prompt mass hysteria? And what about strange alien diseases? And how might it affect our views about religion? USC Dornsife scholars weigh in on what to expect when we first meet extraterrestrials.

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Humans eager to make friends in other star systems might be disappointed to learn that any developing relationship will likely resemble a phenomenally slow pen pal

correspondence, rather than one conducted at the speed of text or email — never mind light. There’s considerable distance between us and, for instance, GJ 273b: 12.36 light-years to be precise.

At that distance, it will take a dozen years for our message to arrive and then another dozen for us to receive the return message. It would be 2041, at the earliest, by the time we get a reply.

And, GJ 273b is one of the closer exoplanets (a planet that orbits a star other than the sun). There are only 12 stars within 10 years of Earth around which exoplanets could circle. That means any exchange of information would take place across at least 20 years and more likely many decades.

Although we typically associate aliens with the acceleration of technology, an actual encounter could, counterintuitively, serve to slow our pace of modern communication — and that could be to our benefit, according to University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Biological Sciences and Psychology Michael Arbib.

In his 1979 paper, “Minds and Millennia: The Psychology of Interstellar Communication,” Arbib wrote “… the leisurely pace of interstellar communication gives us time to assimilate the messages that we receive … it will require the wisdom of many humans to transform the interstellar message into prescriptions for courses of action.”

Curiosity will clearly need to be tempered with caution: Alien civilizations may view us as a resource to conquer — or a food supply — rather than an ally.

“One issue will be whether we even want to communicate and give away our location without first ascertaining their culture,” says Vahé Peroomian, professor (teaching) of physics and astronomy.

Richard Jones, lecturer of English as a second language at the USC American Language Institute, has extensive experience in teaching people from very different cultures and linguistic backgrounds how to overcome the obstacles to effective communication. Drawing on that expertise, he has some suggestions on how to best communicate with aliens.

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— very importantly — would hopefully allay predation, he argues.

“Transmissions that include mathematical data and music are an excellent idea,” he says. “Alien life that lies within our conception of ‘intelligence’ would hopefully be able to understand the relationships contained here, and that these messages come from another intelligent species.”

LOST AND FOUND IN TRANSLATION

“One issue will be whether we even want to communicate and give away our location without first ascertaining their culture.”

Once contact was established, the next challenge would lie in making good conversation. Jones has a few suggestions for how to begin. “ ‘Human’ and ‘be’ would be the first words I would suggest learning how to express,” he says. “Then in turn, we could try to learn how they refer to themselves and how they express that they exist — how would they convey the equivalent of the English sentence: ‘I am human.’ ” Ideally, says Jones, if extraterrestrials are able to travel to us, we would do some sort of exchange program where they could observe us and we could observe them in their daily life. “On the basis of this mutual observation, we might be able to construct a number of ideas about what type of words to teach and learn,” he says.

For an example of how an in-person encounter between an alien and a linguist would likely go down, readers could try watching the movie Arrival, says Zuzanna Fuchs, assistant professor of linguistics. The 2016 sci-fi thriller follows linguistics professor Louise Banks as she attempts to communicate with extraterrestrials, using a whiteboard to write messages to squid-like aliens floating in tanks.

However, Earthling linguistics may be limited in its relevance. “Many of the tricks and patterns we usually use to help us quickly build our knowledge of a new language in linguistic fieldwork are based on our general understanding of how human languages typically work. The twist is that these patterns would probably be inapplicable to alien language,” says Fuchs.

There is also the possibility that aliens may communicate in other vastly different ways from humans, rendering spoken language less helpful.

“It might be possible that alien life forms transmit thoughts via touch or other non-verbal means,” Jones says.

“Communication between insects — such as the dancing of bees — is sometimes described as language.” In that case, first contact might call for a collaboration between a linguist and an entomologist.

INTERGALACTIC GERMS?

Face-to-face meetings with another species may inspire dreams of intergalactic knowledge sharing — but also nightmares of intergalactic germ sharing. Our own history warns us about the consequences of encounters between isolated civilizations.

When Europeans reached the Americas and first made contact with indigenous communities, they brought with them smallpox, measles and other diseases to which Native Americans had no natural immunity. An estimated 90% of the original inhabitants of North America died from devastating outbreaks of these illnesses.

Of course, any risk of infection from outer space depends on whether alien germs contain even remotely similar molecules to our own. So far, scientists think it’s likely there is some shared chemistry between life on Earth and life out 36

in the galaxy. Amino acids and peptides, our familiar precursors to life, have been found on asteroids. Many planets host water, which is where scientists believe life first began on Earth.

In fact, the more immediate risk might lie not in what space brings to humans, but in what we take with us from Earth as we venture into space — and then bring back home later in a changed form.

“Every time we go into space, we bring microorganisms with us. Many of them are highly adaptable, like bacteria, and are some of the oldest organisms to survive on Earth,” says Raffaella Ghittoni, associate professor (teaching) of biology. “These microorganisms could change and adapt in space to things like radiation and then, through another space mission, could return with those changes and become more virulent or more infectious.”

CAN KLINGONS TAKE COMMUNION?

When, or if, we encounter aliens we can probably expect a profound reassessment of religious faith. A 2021 study from the Pew Research Center found that highly religious adults are much more skeptical about the possibility of extraterrestrial life compared with those who are less religious. An alien encounter could throw long-cherished beliefs into question — or appear to confirm them.

Events like solar eclipses are already interpreted by some evangelical Christians as signs of the coming “rapture,” a biblical prediction of fiery end times. The landing of a UFO would likely accelerate such apocryphal fears.

However, belief that extraterrestrials signal the end of the world would hopefully be the position of a small minority within religious groups, says the Rev. Dorian Llywelyn, president of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC Dornsife. There’s wiggle room for the existence of extraterrestrials in many religious texts, after all. Judaism’s Talmud describes God traveling among 18,000 worlds. Both Buddhism and Hinduism hint at the existence of other, populated celestial realms.

Alien arrival is actually more likely to trigger debate than terror among the faithful, says Llywelyn. Catholics, for example, may find that figuring out how to fit Klingons into Christianity adds a new level to a centuries-long theological discussion around who and what can be “saved”: only Christians, only humans or the entire physical world — including, presumably, Klingons.

A VALUABLE LESSON

Proof of life beyond planet Earth is sure to restructure our own sense of self and our place in the cosmos. In that moment, spiritual faith may actually work well alongside scientific inquiry, as a guide for making sense of something we don’t yet understand.

Whether the life we encounter is a race of galaxy-hopping star people or a small microbe inching across the surface of an exoplanet, it will all require profound self-reflection by us Earthlings. That’s a good thing, says Peroomian.

“For millennia, humans have argued that the Earth is special,” he says. “At first, we thought it was the center of the universe, then the center of our galaxy, and even when that was disproven, we still think of Earth as special for being the only location in the universe where life exists.

“Finally dispelling this notion will be a very valuable lesson for humanity.”

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A RCHIV E

A Question of Scale

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hymn book from the 1600s, is exceptionally large and ornate.

Measuring roughly 3 feet in height, the hand-scribed vellum pages are filled with antiphons — short chants sung before or after prayers. An entire choir would need to be able to view the musical notes and phrases to be sung, hence its massive size.

Most likely, it was the property of the church — probably a monastery — in what is now Mexico and used by those who had power in that institution, O’Neill says. “It was an almost sacred object to be treated

with care by a select few — the attention lavished on its decoration and cover pay tribute to that.”

Students also examine a Protestant book of psalms from the 1600s. The humble, hand-held volume printed on paper made from rags would probably have been owned or used by a Protestant in England.

Small and inexpensive, it could easily be slipped into its owner’s pocket to bring to services to sing with a congregation or to pray at home, alone or with family.

The psalms within it were first

translated and put to music during the reign of Henry VIII — a move that shows the shift to the vernacular that accompanied the spread of Protestantism.

Taken together, these two books clearly illustrate why looking at original texts matters, O’Neill says.

“It’s not only the words inside these two works that help us understand the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, but the physical objects themselves,” she explains. “The large book of hymns shows the hierarchy and

beauty valued by the early modern Catholic Church and the small book of psalms reveals the individual nature of the emerging Protestant religion.” —M.B.

Two 400-year-old books held in the USC Libraries Special Collections bring the past to life for undergraduates studying early modern history.

Their differences in size, shape and decoration reveal distinctions between how two religions were practiced in the 1600s.

PHOTO BY MIKE GLIER

A book may contain fascinating histories inscribed on its pages, but its size can also be revealing.

In HIST 103 “The Emergence of Modern Europe,” Lindsay O’Neill, associate professor (teaching) of history, invites her students to the USC Libraries Special Collections to view two rare hymn books from the early modern period. Their differences in scale illustrate variations between religions of the period, as well as differences in how they were used and by whom.

The first volume, a Catholic

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY Faculty News JOE ÁRVAI, Dana and David Dornsife Chair, Wrigley Institute director and professor of psychology, was appointed a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board.

ALICE BAUMGARTNER, assistant professor of history, was awarded a California Book Award for her book South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War (Basic Books, 2020).

MEGAN BECKER, assistant professor (teaching) of international relations, received the 2021 CQ Press Award for Teaching Innovation from the American Political Science Association for creating a qualitative replication project to teach undergraduates about research methods.

ENRIQUE MARTÍNEZ CELAYA, Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts, was appointed to the board of governors of Otis College of Art and Design.

EMILY COOPERDOCK, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences, was selected as the inaugural 2021 Dorothy LaLonde Stout Education Lecturer by the American Geophysical Union.

PHOTO COURTESY OF HANNA REISLER

FRANK CORSETTI, professor of Earth sciences, was awarded the distinguished career award by the Geological Society of America’s Geobiology and Geomicrobiology Division, recognizing his accomplishments in research, education and mentoring, and service in geobiology.

DEISY DEL REAL, assistant professor of sociology, won the award for best article from the sociology of migration research committee of the International Sociological Association for her

article “Toxic Ties: The Reproduction of Legal Violence within Mixed-Status Intimate Partners, Relatives, and Friends.”

PERCIVAL EVERETT, Distinguished Professor of English, was named a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel Telephone (Graywolf Press, 2020) about loss and grief.

STEVEN FINKEL, college dean of graduate and professional education and professor of biological sciences, was elected president of the American Society for Microbiology.

BRITTANY FRIEDMAN, assistant professor of sociology, was named a 2021– 2022 American Bar Foundation/ JPB Foundation Access to Justice Faculty Scholar.

SARAH GUALTIERI, professor of American studies and ethnicity, history and Middle East studies, received the Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award from the Arab American National Museum for her book Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California (Stanford University Press, 2020).

ZAKIYYAH IMAN JACKSON, associate professor of English, won a LAMBDA Literary Award in the LGBTQ Studies category for her book Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (NYU Press, 2020).

JEFFREY JENKINS, Provost Professor of Public Policy, Political Science and Law, received the 2021 V.O. Key Award from the Southern Political Science Association for his book Republican Party Politics and the American South, 1865–1968 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

CLIFFORD JOHNSON, professor of physics and astronomy, received a citation from the

American Physical Society “for outstanding contributions to the understanding of strongly coupled field theories and their implications for quantum gravity, black holes, and the physics of extended objects.”

HONORS

AAAS Elects Chemist

Hanna Reisler is USC Dornsife’s 26th member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

ANNA KRYLOV, professor of chemistry, was elected a Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe).

CAROL MUSKE-DUKES, professor of English, won the Pushcart Prize for her poem “Monarch,” published in spring 2020 in The Kenyon Review.

Also, Muske-Dukes’ poem “Grief Dream” was published in Poema-Day on April 12 by the Academy of American Poets.

VIET THANH NGUYEN, University Professor, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature, was named the recipient of the Sidney Hook Memorial Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

The award recognizes Nguyen’s national distinction in three endeavors — scholarship, undergraduate teaching and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education.

DAPHNA OYSERMAN, Dean’s Professor of Psychology and professor of psychology and education, was awarded the 2021 Distinguished Lifetime Career Award by the International Society for Self and Self-Identity.

JONATHAN STANGE, assistant professor of psychology, received the 2021 President’s New Researcher Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies. The award recognizes his innovative research in cognition, affect regulation and mood disorders.

Continued on page 40.

It began with a fascination with solving puzzles. Now her curiosity has resulted in election to one of the most prestigious and diverse groups of scholars and leaders in the country.

University Professor, Lloyd Armstrong Jr. Chair in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry Hanna Reisler has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS). Reisler is the 26th faculty member at USC Dornsife to be elected.

Reisler is in good company in this year’s AAAS class, which includes civil rights attorney Kimberlé Crenshaw, neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta and Oprah Winfrey.

Reisler says she is eager to contribute to the academy’s goal of providing “pragmatic solutions for complex challenges.”

“I like that the academy tackles a broad range of issues that involve impact on society … and that it is also concerned with ethical challenges,” she says.

An internationally recognized chemist, Reisler studies the detailed mechanisms of chemical reactions by using laser and molecular-beam techniques. Her research relates to environmental, atmospheric and combustion chemistry, focusing on chemical reactions that are sparked by light with the goal of understanding them on a fundamental level.

Reisler’s research is renowned among her colleagues in the field, as is her talent as an instructor, mentor and colleague. She has earned several mentoring awards at USC. The university’s Women in Science and Engineering program, which she co-founded, honored her by creating the Hanna Reisler Mentorship Award in recognition of “the many years she has dedicated to mentoring faculty and especially women at USC.” Asked how she maintains her enthusiasm after nearly five decades, she provides a robust list of motivations.

“What keeps me going? Excitement about science and discovery; optimism; keeping a sense of humor in difficult times; the excitement of my students and postdocs; the high quality of the people around me; the sense of community in my discipline that shares the same excitement about science; my friends at USC; and last, but certainly not least, my family.” —D.S.J. Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 39

F A C U LT Y C A N O N

JACKIE WANG, assistant professor of American studies and ethnicity, was named a 2021 National Book Award in Poetry finalist for her debut collection, The Sunflower Cast a Spell to Save Us from the Void (Nightboat Books, 2021).

Economics and Spatial Sciences, uses the tools of microeconomics to explore how climate change will affect individual economic decisions, and the broad impact of those choices on transforming the larger economy.

AFRO-REALISMS AND THE ROMANCES OF RACE: RETHINKING BLACKNESS IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN NOVEL LSU Press / Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus, associate professor of English, expands critical understandings of American literary realism and African American literature by destabilizing the rigid binaries that too often define discussions of race, genre and periodization.

WHEN CAN WE GO BACK TO AMERICA: VOICES OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION DURING WWII Simon and Schuster / Susan Kamei, managing director of the Spatial Sciences Institute, weaves the voices of more than 130 Japanese Americans, who were tragically and unconstitutionally incarcerated — mostly as children and young adults — during World War II because of their race.

BECOMING HUMAN AGAIN: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE RWANDA GENOCIDE AGAINST THE TUTSI University of California Press / Donald Miller, Leonard K. Firestone Professor of Religion, and contributors Lorna Touryan Miller and Arpi Misha Miller, create a powerful oral history of the 1994 genocidal slaughter of at least 800,000 Tutsi at the hands of the Hutu majority and of its aftermath.

Alumni News 1980s

ROBERT GREENE (B.A., English, ’81), veteran Los Angeles Times editorialist, won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his series about criminal justice reform.

CHARLES “CHRIS” ISLEIB (B.A., English, ’85) helped create the National World War I Memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring 4.7 million American veterans.

CHRISTOPHER KORTE (M.A., international relations, ’86) retired as a special agent with the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.

1990s THE TREES Graywolf Press / Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor of English, takes direct aim at racism and police violence in this literary thriller that addresses the painful legacy of lynching in the United States.

ADAPTING TO CLIMATE CHANGE: MARKETS AND THE MANAGEMENT OF AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE Yale University Press / Matthew Kahn, Provost Professor of 40

THE GOVERNMENT OF EMERGENCY: VITAL SYSTEMS, EXPERTISE, AND THE POLITICS OF SECURITY Princeton University Press / Andrew Lakoff, professor of sociology, writing with Stephen Collier, traces the origins and development of the modern American emergency government, designed to prepare for and manage potentially catastrophic events.

SOLIDARITY ECONOMICS: WHY MUTUALITY AND MOVEMENTS MATTER Polity / Manuel Pastor, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity and Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change, writing with Chris Benner, invites us to build a more robust, sustainable and equitable economy grounded in our instincts for connection and community.

KEN CAMP (B.A., political science, ’98), former manager of USC Women of Troy, was named assistant coach of the women’s basketball team at St. Martin’s University in Lacey, WA. HELENA HALMARI (M.A., linguistics, ’92; Ph.D., linguistics, ’94) was named Distinguished Professor of English and awarded the title of Texas State University System Regents’ Professor.

ALBERT LEE (B.A., social sciences and communication (economics), ’92) was elected to the Board of Trustees at Harvey Mudd College for a three-year term.

LOIS LEVEEN (M.A., English, ’95) received a research grant from the National Archives

Foundation to research African American Civil War spies.

JENNIFER “JAYE” LOPEZ VAN SOEST (B.A., English, ’95) joined the Fair Food Network as its first senior director of development.

QUINCY WATTS (B.A., social sciences and communication, ’94) has been named USC’s director of track and field and cross country.

2000s

ADAM BENKATO (B.A., history, ’09) was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley where he became first holder of the Daryabari Presidential Chair in Iranian Studies.

THEODORE “TEDDY” CHADWICK (B.A., political science, ’05) was elected chair of the Wisconsin Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

MARGARET GALVAN (B.A., international relations, ’07) has been selected as a new fellow in Rare Book School’s Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.

MATTHEW HEIN (B.A., Spanish, ’03) was featured on CBS2 News in Los Angeles for his work as an origami artist.

SASHA VILLACIS (B.A., international relations, ’03), founder of Inspiring Philanthropy, a California consulting company, was honored as a Platinum Finalist for Best Practices in Fundraising by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

2010s

DIEUWERTJE KAST (B.S., biological sciences, ’11; M.A., teaching, ’14; EDD, education (leadership), ’20) was honored with the Social Impact Abie Award.

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY Marriages and Births

ANDREW DANZA (B.A., philosophy, ’08) and PHOEBE DANZA (B.A., biological sciences, ’09) welcomed their son, Dominic Danza.

CHESTER BARRY FERNANDO (B.A., economics, ’04) and KATRICE FERNANDO (B.S., kinesiology, ’07) welcomed their third child, Nina James. She joins older brothers Miles and Quincy.

ANNELISE MCQUAY (B.A., political science, ’08) and COLIN MCQUAY (B.S., business administration, ’09; MBA, business administration, ’16) welcomed a son, Logan Clark McQuay. Logan joins big sister, Molly, and big brother, Maxwell.

BROOKE (ROMINE) NANKERVIS (B.A., psychology, ’15) and Ryan Nankervis welcomed a son, Hudson Alika Nankervis, on May 27, 2021.

KRISTOFER O’DOWD (B.A., American studies and ethnicity, ’10) married Alexandra (Costa) O’Dowd.

MACKENZIE RALSTON (B.A., international relations, ’14) married Michael Dwyer.

JEFFREY TAMARU (B.A., East Asian area studies, ’13) and JAYME (TSUTSUSE) TAMARU (B.A., philosophy and religion, ’13) welcomed a daughter, Tyler Tamaru, on Aug. 12, 2021.

In Memoriam PHOTO COURTESY OF LUCERO NOYOL A

CHARLES LOUIS BAECKER (B.A., economics, ’73) of Laguna Niguel, CA (6/25/2021) at age 69; administrative director of the Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Irvine.

SAMUEL BROWN (B.A., geology, ’52) of Durango, CO (1/7/2021) at age 91; successful

independent oilman; passionate adventurer and traveler.

loved square dancing, games and traveling.

LESLIE BURKE (M.A., English, ’49) of San Francisco, CA (6/2/2021) at age 102; high school teacher and principal; known for his wit; loved the outdoors, classical music and animals.

ANN (JARVIS) LONGYEAR (B.A., communications, ’48) of Pasadena, CA (5/21/2021) at age 95; member of the Pasadena Public Library Foundation for more than 30 years; honored with the California Library Association's President's Award in 2019.

JASON CHRISTOFFERSON (M.S., mathematical finance, ’15) of Los Angeles, CA (3/31/2021) at age 38; served in U.S. Marines and Wyoming Air National Guard; loved L.A. PATRICIA (LAMB) COUCH (M.S., occupational therapy, ’54) of Flippin, AR (10/27/2020) at age 92; physical education and English teacher; member of Daughters of the American Revolution.

JOHN DUFFY (B.A., chemistry, ’48) of Aliso Viejo, CA (4/15/2021) at age 94; served as 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps; worked for Signal Hill Oil and Gas Refinery in Bakersfield, CA; loved camping and ballroom dancing.

RICHARD GABRIEL (Ph.D., psychology, ’63) of Long Beach, CA (2/17/2021) at age 92; worked at Douglas Aircraft; loved for his sense of humor and kind, gentle nature.

GEORGE HUGHES JR. (B.A., economics, ’80) of Warren, NJ (3/7/2021) at age 62; tenures at McKinsey and Co. and Blue Capital; devoted parishioner and avid sports fan.

WAYNE KEUP (B.A., political science, ’69) of Grantham, NH (3/28/2021) at age 73; served in U.S. Navy; partner at several prominent law firms; opened his own law practice in Washington, D.C. JOAN GLENNA KING (B.A., mathematics, ’64) of South Gate, CA (5/5/2021) at age 79; taught in Los Angeles Unified School District; served on South Gate City Council and held office of mayor in 1979;

TROJANA LIT Y

Trojan Twins

Former foster youth Carmen and Lucero Noyola earned USC degrees while raising children as single mothers.

SAMUEL DAVID MILLER (B.A., international relations, ’19) of Sarasota, FL (4/15/2021) at age 24; worked for TD International in Washington, D.C., before the pandemic; pursued a master of science in finance at Georgetown University; loved studying languages and traveling.

JAMES “JIM” NORRIS (B.S., zoology, ’52) of Jackson, CA (6/3/2021) at age 90; served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War; lifelong learner and devoted friend to many.

MARIAN JACKSON PATTERSON (B.A., mathematics, ’46) of Canton, OH (7/10/2021) at age 97; retired from Los Angeles Unified School District as high school principal after 45 years of service.

TIMOTHY ALLAN QUON (B.S., biological sciences, ’74; D.D.S., ’78) of Torrance, CA (2/2/2021) at age 67; practiced dentistry for almost 40 years; active church member.

KAREN “INDIANA” REED (B.A., English, ’77) of Durango, CO (6/17/2021) at age 66; long and prestigious career in marketing and communications; talented chef and homemaker.

MARY ROONEY (B.A., English and international relations, ’77; J.D., ’80) of Newport Beach, CA (4/30/2021) at age 65; real estate lawyer; president of Trojan League of Los Angeles; received Widney Alumni House Award for volunteerism and leadership.

Continued on page 43.

Carmen, left, and Lucero Noyola earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at USC while each raising a child — Adam and Aurora, respectively — as single mothers.

Twin sisters Carmen and Lucero Noyola came to USC with hopes of making better lives for themselves. If you hear them tell their stories, you might be amazed they made it to college at all. The two women had been in and out of juvenile hall and foster care as youth, and as teenagers they became single mothers.

And in 2019, both women graduated from USC with bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Although the sisters worked hard, they credit much of their success to their supporters at Trojan Guardian Scholars (TGS), which has helped hundreds of college students who went through homelessness or foster care. The organization helped provide child care for Lucero’s daughter, Aurora, and Carmen’s son, Adam, so the sisters could study. TGS also helped connect the women with financial aid and other resources.

Carmen completed her degree in nongovernmental organizations and social change at USC Dornsife and her master’s in urban planning at the USC Price School of Public Policy. The same year, Lucero earned her master’s in social work from the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, adding to her 2016 psychology and sociology degrees from USC Dornsife.

Now, as alumnae, Carmen and Lucero want to give back to the organization that helped them when they needed it.

As part of their work with a national philanthropic network, they were able to secure a $6,000 grant for TGS, a gift that will go a long way toward supporting other USC students with similar backgrounds as they pursue their degrees. But the Noyola twins know there is still work to be done.

“We know TGS needs so much more,” Carmen said. “We want to leverage this gift as a way to highlight the program and get more support. This community is still at USC and still in need.” —E.L. Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 41

ALUMNI CANON who fought in the Revolutionary War and their links to the inherited tradition of Protestant martyrdom.

Alien Encounters

An alumnus explores what belief in the paranormal tells us about ourselves.

LOST STORIES OF WEST COAST LATINO BOXING, Arcadia Publishing / Gene Aguilera (B.A., sociology, ’76) recounts buried tales and colorful narratives of beloved Mexican ring idols such as Ruben Olivares, Mando Ramos and Carlos Zarate.

Purported visitations by UFOs and aliens, as well as other unexplained experiences, can be used to understand larger societal issues, argues alumnus and author Colin Dickey.

“What I found is that even if something seems bogus, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a real impact on our world.

We think it’s all weirdos and whackos, but fringe culture has real implications,” says Dickey, who explores the paranormal and the occult in his books.

Dickey, who earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in comparative literature from USC Dornsife in 2008 and 2011, is the author of The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained (Penguin Random House, 2021), in which he discusses what paranormal phenomena can teach us about our fears, prejudices and fantasies.

“Aliens often seem to exist in our culture to help someone promote their preferred sense of reality as an inevitable,” he says. “Some of the earliest alien contacts describe blond, blue-eyed aliens spreading the word about a utopian or Christian society.”

There’s also a racial erasure in ufology, he notes, citing the experience of biracial couple Betty and Barney Hill, which has become the standard template for abductee stories.

“A movie was made about them that is clearly also about the racism they experienced, but that component was ignored by audiences,” he says.

In The Unidentified, Dickey, a National University professor, also describes phenomena that are both real and unexplained, like the “Kentucky meat shower” of 1876 in which a woman and her grandson witnessed chunks of meat raining down in the grandmother’s yard.

“Nobody knew where [the falling meat] came from. This wasn’t a hoax; this is something that really happened,” he says.

“In the 19th and 20th centuries, there was this ‘disenchantment,’ as the rise of rational science meant most things could be explained. Then, things started happening that seemed to resist explanation. I think it’s still important to keep your eyes open to wonder, even if there is a scientific explanation for much of our world.” — M.C. 42

THE YEAR OF JULIUS AND CAESAR: 59 B.C. AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC Johns Hopkins University Press / Stefan Chrissanthos (M.A., history, ’91; Ph.D., history, ’99) explores a watershed year in the history of the late Roman Republic, answering many important historical questions and establishing an accurate chronology.

ONE LIFE TO GIVE: MARTYRDOM AND THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Fortress Press / John Fanestil (Ph.D., history, ’17) explores the motivations of ordinary soldiers

DÁLVI: SIX YEARS IN THE ARCTIC TUNDRA Atlantic Books / Laura Galloway (B.A., political science, ’95) recounts her experiences as an outsider in a remote reindeer-herding village in the Arctic, forging a solitary existence as she struggles to learn the language.

REVERSE COLONIZATION: SCIENCE FICTION, IMPERIAL FANTASY, AND ALT-VICTIMHOOD University of Iowa Press / David Higgins (B.A., English, ’99) argues that fantastical reverse colonization narratives long popular in science fiction have led to dangerous political thinking and false claims of victimhood that are used to justify repression and violence.

LIFE IS WHAT YOU BAKE IT Clarkson Potter / Vallery Lomas (B.A., psychology, ’07; J.D., ’10), the winner of The Great American Baking Show who quit her job as an attorney to devote her life to baking, pens a story of personal growth and provides more than 100 recipes.

POLITICS AS SOUND: WASHINGTON, DC, HARDCORE SCENE 1978-1983, University of Illinois Press / Shayna Maskell (MPW, ’06) explores the innovative and uncompromising hardcore punk scene in Washington, D.C., that birthed a new sound and nurtured a vibrant subculture aimed at a specific segment of the city’s youth.

In his eleventh book, STRONGER THROUGH ADVERSITY McGrawHill / Joseph Michelli (M.A., psychology, ’84; Ph.D., psychology, ’88) provides insights on crisis leadership from 140-plus CEOs and senior executives at top companies.

D O R N S I F E F A M I LY DARREN SCHENCK (MPW, ’00) of Middlesex, NJ (5/24/2021) at age 49; senior writer and communications leader at USC schools for more than 16 years.

D O R N S I F E O LY M P I A N S USC Dornsife alumnae (from left) Amanda Longan and Stephania Haralabidis, with teammates Kaleigh Gilchrist and Paige Hauschild, celebrate their gold medal win in women’s water polo at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

DAVID RICHARD SMITH (M.A., physics, ’76; Ph.D., biology, ’81) of Rockville, MD (7/25/2021) at age 76; submarine sonar software engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

DAVID SMITH (B.A., natural sciences and mathematics (geological science), ’50; B.S., education, ’51) of Encino, CA (2/24/2021) at age 95; served in the U.S. Navy; loved square dancing, hiking and traveling.

ROMAYNE THOMPSON (MLA, ’74) of Lawndale, CA (5/28/2021) at age 92; taught high school English for 25 years; Torrance Unified School District’s Teacher of the Year, 1985-86.

SCOTT TOLMAN (M.A., international relations, ’80) of Mead, WA (5/25/2021) at age 76; served in the U.S. Army as a lieutenant colonel; active in his church; loved traveling.

ROBERT UNRUHE (B.A., history, ’47; M.S., education, ’51) of Ojai, CA (5/11/2021) at age 97; successful career in the Los Angeles Unified School District; Eagle Scout and outstanding track athlete.

P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F U S C AT H L E T I C S /M A R K C O U S IN E AU

SUBMIT ALUMNI NEWS FOR CONSIDERATION ONLINE AT dornsife.usc.edu/alumni-news.

Information may be edited for space.

Listings for the “Alumni News” and “In Memoriam” sections are compiled based on submissions from alumni and USC Dornsife departments as well as published notices from media outlets.

dornsife.usc.edu/alumni-news

MEDALISTS

Fight on to Victory!

Despite a lingering pandemic, USC Dornsife alumni and students won big at the 2020 Olympic Games, held this summer in Tokyo.

With the COVID-19 pandemic emptying every arena in the host city of Tokyo, the 2020 Summer Games were perhaps the oddest — and quietest — Olympics in history.

Athletes competed to thin applause from the few staff and journalists in the stands, while masks covered up smiles on the medal podiums.

The subdued mood echoed the past 18 months of training for athletes who were locked down, isolated from teammates and forced to get creative to continue their training. Athletes such as USC Dornsife undergraduate Tilly Kearns, a member of Australia’s water polo team, resorted to swimming in the open ocean, weight-lifting in her living room and strategizing with teammates over Zoom.

Despite these challenging circumstances, numerous USC Dornsife alumni and six current students fought on to make history at the games.

Undergraduate Noelani Day, a human biology major, became the first Tongan from the island to represent the nation in the pool at the games. Fellow undergraduate and international relations major Alexei Sancov was the first Trojan to represent Moldova in the Olympics.

After helping the USC women’s water polo team win the 2021 National Championship, psychology major Maud Megens played for the Netherlands’ water polo team in Tokyo.

Economics graduate Santo Condorelli ’18 picked up USC’s first medal of the games when he helped Italy win silver in the men’s 4-x-100 meter freestyle swimming relay.

Andre De Grasse ’16, who majored in sociology, streaked across the finish line to win gold in the 200 meter men’s track event and a bronze in the 100 meters. Later, De Grasse and Aaron Brown ’14, a political science graduate, secured a bronze medal for Canada in the 4-x-100 meter track relay.

Political science graduate Rai Benjamin ’19, alongside fellow USC alumnus Michael Norman, won a gold medal for the United States in the 4-x-400 meter relay. Benjamin will hang that next to his silver medal in the 400 meter hurdles — for which he set the second fastest time on record and is now the U.S. record holder.

Trojans also dominated on the beach. April Ross, a 2005 international relations graduate, and her partner won gold in beach volleyball for the U.S. Political science undergraduate Tina Graudina, nearly secured a bronze medal for Latvia in the same event.

The U.S. women’s water polo team, which included USC Dornsife international relations alumna Stephania Haralabidis ’17 and psychology alumna Amanda Longan ’19, capped off the games with a gold medal. The jubilant players celebrated the win with a splash by pushing their coach into the pool after their victory. —M.C.

RAI BENJAMIN ’19 political science men’s 4-x-400 meters (gold) men’s 400 meter hurdles (silver)

AARON BROWN ’14 political science men’s 4-x-100 meter relay

SANTO CONDORELLI ’18 economics men’s 4-x-100 meter freestyle swimming relay

ANDRE DE GRASSE ’16 sociology men's 200 meters (gold) men’s 100 meter (bronze) men’s 4-x-100 meter relay (bronze)

STEPHANIA HARALABIDIS ’17 International relations women’s water polo

AMANDA LONGAN ’19 psychology women’s water polo

APRIL ROSS ’05 international relations beach volleyball Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | 43

TROJA N COMM U NIT Y

New Alumni Adventure Explore New Mexico while discovering “bookpacking” by participating in a unique, weeklong literary experience.

44

For more details about “Bookpacking in New Mexico,” go to bookpackers.usc.edu. The course is limited to 12 participants and early registration is encouraged.

N E W M E X I C O P H O T O BY A N D R E W C H AT E R; C A M P U S P H O T O BY M A R C M E R H E J

“Bookpacking” is a vibrant literary and cultural travel experience that focuses on reading novels set in your destination while you are on the road. For the first time, it is being offered to alumni and parents.

Imagine spending a week immersed in the literature of New Mexico while exploring the region’s stunning landscapes, history and culture with a USC Dornsife professor of English as your personal guide.

This is the essence of “bookpacking” — a vibrant literary and cultural travel experience that focuses on reading novels set in your destination while you are on the road. The result is an inspiring encounter between literature and place that deepens your enjoyment, appreciation and understanding of both.

Bookpacking is the invention of USC Dornsife’s Andrew Chater, professor of the practice of English and an awardwinning British filmmaker and BBC Television historian and presenter. The idea, he says, grew out of something he’s been doing all his life — traveling with novels that are set in, or somehow strongly linked to, the places he visits.

Chater successfully introduced bookpacking to USC Dornsife in 2017 with his month-long annual Maymester in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana.

Chater followed that with a second popular bookpacking course set in Los Angeles. Now, USC Dornsife and Chater are extending this rich experience to alumni, parents and others with a week-long bookpacking trip to New Mexico from Nov. 5 to 12, 2022.

“We’ve had so many occasions when parents would say to us, ‘Gosh, I wish there was a class like that when I was at college,’ ” Chater says. “So, we thought to ourselves, ‘Why can’t we take this extraordinary educational experience and offer it to a broader audience who can also benefit from it and enjoy it?’ ” The class (which can be taken for pleasure or for credit) will visit Santa Fe, Taos and the pueblos of Albuquerque, exploring locations from the novels of Willa Cather, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Rudolfo Anaya and Leslie Marmon Silko.

The class will dive deep into literature while savoring the tapestry of cultures — Hispanic, Native American and Anglo American — that lends this destination such unique appeal.

“There’s something so special about the landscape and the cultures of this place, which take you out of normal life and into a place that’s transcendent and electrifyingly different,” Chater says.

One of the highlights of the course will be a visit led

by Acoma guides to the Native American Acoma Pueblo, perched atop a mesa in the desert regions of central New Mexico.

“A couple of the novels that we’ll be reading describe the Acoma Pueblo — one of the most remarkable places in the Americas,” Chater says. “People have been living on top of that rock for a thousand years, and to be able to visit it in this particular way makes the experience all the more special. It really is one of the great travel experiences of America.” —S.B.

TRANQUILITY The late afternoon sun creates an opportunity for peaceful reflection at USC Dornsife’s Mudd Hall of Philosophy.

Fall 2021 / Winter 2022 | IBC

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Life Moment

AN EVENING WITH ZADIE SMITH

Award-winning author Zadie Smith in conversation with USC Dornsife Writer in Residence Geoff Dyer at a USC Visions and Voices event on Nov. 2.

PHOTO BY GINA CLYNE