We can prevent asteroid impacts.
An asteroid impact is the only natural disaster we have the technology to prevent. But to prevent an impact, we’d need time–ideally decades– to prepare. Therefore, we must discover all of the potentially hazardous near-Earth objects now.
I am an associate professor at Olin College. My research takes tools from the fields of mathematics and computer science and uses them to discover and better understand asteroids and comets. I work with physics and astronomy students to model the physical properties and evolution of these bodies, and I work with engineering students to develop software (such as FindPOTATOs) that enables other researchers and citizen scientists to study asteroids and comets.
Recent projects:
The first large-scale reprocessing of asteroid discovery survey images. With custom-built software that employs machine learning algorithms, we find new observations of faint asteroids in archived data. The new observations extend observed arcs, allowing for better measurement of asteroid orbits. We also report observations of currently unobservable objects. (paper accepted, will be linked soon).
Linking software that makes it easier for users to find asteroids and comets in images of the night sky and submit measurements to the international archive for this data. This code will allow experts in the field to do targeted searches for edge-case objects, such as long period comets. It will also help more students, scientists from other fields, and citizen scientists contribute to small body science. Uses ball tree data structures for speed. (paper, GitHub repo)
