Good afternoon everybody. My name is Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC in the New York Times and it is a privilege for me to be with everybody here. This is going to be I have to say a very special panel. I swear to you there's I don't actually think there's anything like what's about to happen here. I've been coming to Davos I think coming on 15 years and I don't think we've ever had a conversation about space like this nor what you may see in about a half an hour depending on the great technology we can always hope. We're going to have a conversation about space and what is happening. It feels like there is so much changing and shifting investments being made but also larger governance questions about space that are being raised as this entire space to use the pun if you will is shifting and growing in so many ways. Let me tell you who is with us right now. Joseph Oscar is the director general European Space Agency and he's going to be helping us with a little bit of technical help in just a moment. Sylvia Macario is the geospatial engineer Cagali hub in Rwanda and William Marshall is here. He's the co-founder and chief executive officer of Planet Labs. And as I said to you what's going to make this amazing. We're going to be going to space all together in just a little bit and we're going to have a conversation with Samantha Christopher ready. She is an astronaut with the European Space Agency. She is up in space and we're going to have a link with her in just a bit to discuss her own experience and what is going on. And boy does she have a lot to say about what is going on. Here's what I want to start this though and I'm going to start with Will at the end if you could just set the table for us because I think we're all trying to understand and we see lots of headlines about Elon Musk doing this and Jeff Bezos doing this and the Europeans doing this and the Russians doing this. How do you see it. What's the opportunity but also where are the fault lines right now. Yeah great question. I mean I think there is a space renaissance going on is an exciting time for space no doubt. We are seeing we use rockets we're seeing space tourism we're seeing missions to the moon and Mars even private missions to the moon. But I would say that behind the scenes there's a couple of things that are driving that one is lower cost rockets and therefore reduced access costs of accessing space. We've seen rocket costs come down about five X over the last five to 10 years. And then what we're also seeing is the increasing cost performance of satellites. We've seen those change for about a thousand X over the last five to 10 years same period. And so it's a bit like the main frame to desktop computer time frame for space. And it's bringing out radical new capabilities just like that time in computer industry or new capabilities. The real upshot which I think is the sort of behind the scenes what's going on. The upshot of that is actually a is nothing to do with rockets or satellites or the moon or Mars. It's actually to do with data and AI and the earth economy and and how we're helping both sustainability with massive new data sets because we were producing 10 times more imagery and information about the earth surface. Our own company has 200 satellites we image the whole earth every day is brand new sort of data set. There's other companies doing other things like that. So we have brand new data sets to help us to take care of planet Earth and we have more communication bandwidth to send information around the planet and all of this amounts to ways in which we can help us to take care of the sustainability of the planet and help take care of situations like in Ukraine right now where we're shedding light and bringing about global transparency and accountability to the problems. The old you were saying there's a couple facing us. We have space debris our environment challenge in in space and just like the environment on the earth the sooner you nip it in the bud the better and we have tools to do that. But there's some challenges of governance there and also ownership. There's a lot of competition going to take place on the moon even though the moon is quite big. It's the size of the African continent. The areas of interest are in the poles where there's all the water for example and so everyone's going to want to go there and the peaks of eternal light where all the power resources are and so everyone's going to be zooming in some areas. But we haven't really sorted out who can own what and and how do people have property rights if at all in space. And so we've got very basic rules but we need more established rules going into more more details on that. So there's just a couple of the problems that can be faced in the space community. OK. I want to have a debate about that in just a moment. So I want to ask you this for those who are listening to us now and who say to themselves why are we spending all this money out there when we should be spending money here. You tell them what. Right. Thank you so much. First of all I wanted to make a little correction. I'm a global chef from the Kigali hub. Yes. And I'm a geospatial engineer and space technologist and so the importance of space as well as highlighted is very fundamental. We are using space technology every day every single day. The thing is we need to do more awareness as space technologists or space engineers or engineers and scientists working in space. When you came here or when you're trying to find a place to to go eat during your doubles event you used Google Maps. That is due to space technology. You are probably using when you use the shuttles. These walkie talkies being used in the shuttles that is due to space technology. So once we start creating that awareness on the importance of space technology and how it can be used to track disease to help monitor the environment then we will pull all the public to understand and go with us that space technology is indeed important for the general population and it's not for just a few billionaires. You mentioned a few a few billionaires and let me ask you this. There's been a debate about the privatization of space and given the public piece of this that you represent. How do you see this public private either partnership but also debate about who should own so much of space. I mean there's a huge debate as you say between the private and public. But let me just say one one more word what we were saying and I really like your statement of space needs to be made for people because it has to help people. And there are many tools that are really helping people in all countries across the globe. I mean we have climate research agriculture in case of natural disasters. There's a lot of information that comes every single day to people in need. Ukraine is a very good example where people really rely on the information in order to do what needs to be done. But coming back to Andrew what you say about public and private. Yes I am from the public side but I'm a big fan of commercialization. When I became DG about a year ago I put priorities a strategy on the table of what we should do in Europe. I'm in charge of the European Space Agency in Europe. What we should do in order to really foster and develop the commercial sector. And there's a lot to be done. Of course I have been inspired by Silicon Valley and the companies there. In fact I was visiting Will's company some time ago and many others SpaceX Google and many others. What I do come from from that trip where I took my most critical managers with me because I had to convince them that we have to change gear in Europe is that in order to succeed you need actually do three things. Number one you need talented people who are driven by by an idea who have the energy to do it and just ready to go for it. You need access to money. Of course this is always useful and here in Davos of course a very hot debate but also you need to be fast and dynamic and really respond to it quickly. And I think we can do that. So in Europe we're building up this new commercialization and what very few people I think realize is that even the big companies they call and mask us as the as a good example of SpaceX. SpaceX has been built together with NASA and he's very grateful to NASA. And as he also said publicly because NASA has been providing a lot of expertise engineering and technical expertise but also funding to build up the Falcon rocket as you know about four billion U.S. dollars have been put in from public money to build up the SpaceX the Falcon rocket. I think that's also model I would like to adopt in Europe to make sure that public investment is fostering new companies small and big in order to really have a very vibrant commercial landscape which we need to have. Let's talk about property rights if we could because it's a fascinating issue here on Earth for a very long time. If you got there first it was yours. That's how we did it. And so the question is how you see this playing out in space. Who shows up on Mars first. Is it Elon's. For example if Elon gets there first does he get to keep it. Does Jeff Bezos get the moon if he wants if he gets there. If you know how how is this support honestly. How is this supposed to work and do you imagine that there is going to be wars waged in space over property. I mean this is certainly a discussion we have and there is there's very limited rules today in place to regulate what happens on the moon. Let's assume somebody goes there is putting up a big factory for for example getting resources from the moon. There are quite a few which we expect to be. And very right question. If you put there your tools and your your caterpillars or whatever you have. Can you stay there. And what happens if somebody next door wants exactly the same access to these resources. Actually this is not settled today. There is a moon treaty but not signed up by some important countries. There's an Artemis core which is also on the table again not signed up by everyone. So it is. There are some initiatives and there's a lot of discussion. But to be frank with you it is not properly regulated. What do you think. Well if I just add yeah I mean I think this needs to be resolved for clarity for economic development as well. And for human interest because it shouldn't be just the first first concert first serve while West sort of scenario. That's not going to be good for humanity. But I would say that there is a you know the outer space treaty does say that countries and it implies because of the way international law work companies cannot own the moon. Although there are companies right now that are talking about going there and landing on the South Pole the moon and claiming ownership of parts of the moon. They can't actually do that. But as Yosef is saying when you get into the details they can land there but can they if they extract resources is that then there's what if somebody lands next to them. If it's close proximity there's all these details which you know if you stack up the law of the land it's like yay hi the law of the sea it's yay hi the law of the air it's yay hi and the law of space it's like this. You know we've got five treaties and we're just at the very beginning and it needs to be a collaborative venture between all the different actors current and future to take into account the needs of everyone. Is that a pride Sylvia and just everyone can jump into this. Is that a private public partnership that we're talking about. Do you think that that is nation states that have to effectively create those rules. Just and just to read you where there's a report back in January that NATO put together a policy. NATO will consider an attack against a member country's assets in space as an assault on the alliance and such actions could lead to a coordinated armed response from all members if necessary and that attack of course would be on earth. So this is this is a fascinating sort of development to sort of think about what this could potentially mean. So during the advent of space we had very few nations trying to come up with legislations on how to access space that put limitation to other countries trying to access space and it is what it is to up to today and more countries are trying to get into space. We obviously have the international communication union which is charged with spectrum allocation to offer opportunities for countries to launch satellites to space. But we are progressively working towards that. But I want to put a different perspective on what we talk about in terms of colonization of space. It gives a really bad vibe in terms of coming from a country in the African continent where colonialism actually really decimated opportunity and potential. When you think about Mars we think as scientists and everybody else looking into Mars we think that there are no beings in Mars. But what if there are beings in Mars and we are talking about colonization of Mars when potentially there could be beings who are actually surviving off of Mars. So changing that narrative is really incredibly important and that's why we need all nations on board on the table trying to create legislation that works for everyone and not just a few countries. Speak to it because this is your this is your business. And and do you think you can get all the countries in the world around the table and are there going to be countries that are going to try to splinter off in the same way we're having conversations about globalization. And we're talking about deglobalization. I mean this is a big challenge and you absolutely right. And I think this is maybe from a legislative point of view the biggest challenge we are facing of course technology is the one we are dealing with every day and building the rockets and building the spacecraft to make it possible. But equally challenging is really the rules of engagement and the rules of behavior there. We have a forum that does that. The United Nations Office about the space affairs is the the entity and the corpus is the body that is dealing with international legislation related to space. However to be very very clear it is a very slow machinery. And it is something that needs a lot of time to really form this consensus. And I think this is something that that we see. But there is no other body. There is not any anyone else that can regulate. But let me come to something you you mentioned earlier which is space debris where we have a real life situation today. The moon is still a bit further away and until the moon is getting used for resources. There are still a couple of years to come. But in space in orbits space debris is an issue today because we we have millions of particles of the size of a centimeter flying around to track them to know whether they hit the space station. And in fact one of my employees Samantha Christopheretti with whom we are talking a couple of minutes is out there. And I'm worried about her because she is in danger of space debris. And this comes from ASAPS as they're called anti satellite tests which are creating new clouds of space debris. We had the most recent one in just in fall last year 15,000 new particles coming there. And another astronaut Matthias Maurer who was up there at this point he had to go into the vehicle. The Orion space capsule to take shelter together with the astronauts because they're safer than the space station itself. And this is a problem. This is a problem for astronauts but also satellites up there. What is the solution. What's the solution. There are two types of solutions. One of course is the more I would say formal way of dealing with it through space traffic management and we are putting programs to get to do that. So first of all to know where space debris is and then to have rules of engagement how to behave like traffic rules on the on the surface or rules for aviation. And the same is being discussed in space. But there's also the very practical aspect which is those who are having satellites just call each other. I mean there is of course not the red phone but this is all very automated but call each other and say look your satellite is colliding or is about to collide with mine. We need to do what we call an orbit avoidance or collision avoidance maneuver. So one needs to go up the other one goes down and then they avoid each other. And this is happening on a routine basis through the various operators of the satellite. So they're practically those people or those operators and owners of satellites are work very well together. Well can I ask you this is a broader question. But it's about what I would call the good guys and the bad guys which is your company right now is working with the Pentagon to track Russian troops from up in the sky. Can you explain how that works. Yeah. But also this is the good guy bad. It's being used I would argue because I think of you as one of the good guys. But I can also see how this type of technology could be used by one of the bad guys. And how we are all supposed to think about that. Well let me just explain in the context of Ukraine because I think that's really illustrative. I mean firstly when we started planet the primary goal is about helping us understand and take care of the planet like monitoring deforestation and ice caps and and helping businesses like agriculture and all these things that can benefit from this sort of data. The same rules apply that it's the same theory of change which is that you can't manage what you don't measure. And so we're having data on a faster timescale that help us to manage all these problems. This is bringing accountability on the sustainability side. It's the same on the security side. We are imaging all of Ukraine every day like we're imaging every other place on the planet every day. And you know you can't get away with large scale troop buildups without everyone noticing. We help provide that to entities in defense of Ukrainian sovereignty right now. We also provide it to humanitarian organizations that are trying to bring reliefs effort. So medical suppliers to people in Ukraine take care of refugees displaced people within Ukraine. There's seven million people displaced within Ukraine. And finally we're trying to where appropriate show that to the news media. A lot of the when you see images on the front page of the New York Times your your outlet has had our imagery on a few times in the last month where we've been showing the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in in Marriott poll for example. And in each case it's cooling out what Putin was saying is doing the opposite. You know with drawing troops. Oh well we see them building a bridge over here exactly in the opposite. We're not hitting civilian targets. We point that out. And everyone gets to see this through putting it online and putting in the hands of journalists to expose that to the world. I think that's playing a significant part in cohering the West. There's no longer debate. You know this is and it brings everyone closer to what's going on. We get to see it in real time. Everyone gets to see it not just the CIA and the KGB. Everyone gets to see it. And that's I think a lot of why Switzerland has become less neutral. Sweden and Finland are talking about joining NATO. Germany is is increasing its military budget and so on. And it's and the coherence of the West in response to Ukraine is because everyone's on the same page about exactly what's going on. What Putin is doing and what it can be used for bad purposes. I mean I worry about being used for for targeting civilians for example. But it's extremely hard to do that actually. And what it's generally useful for is wide scale scanning for and and the more people that access that data the better. So we have a non-exclusivity principle. So we will never give an image to one person that we won't sell to others. And that ensures that in any conflict there's multiple eyes. Is the New York Times gets to look at it. The U.N. gets to look at it. The Ukrainians get to look at it. And then and then that's going to serve everyone better because it's when there's misinformation and when there's a lack of information that there's miscalculation in wars. If you go back to the Cold War it was when the U.S. put missiles in Turkey and the Russians didn't know that it almost got hot or when the Russians put missiles in Cuba. And the U.S. didn't know that things almost got hot. When people knew about each other's activity it was better. We are bringing helping to bring transparency to the whole world to everyone instead of just the two superpowers as was then. And I think that that generally enhances peace and security. So what do you think about competition in space. I think we need to redefine capitalism. That's that has been my discussion with my task. But when you have will here he will say that that we shouldn't do that. But for me I would totally agree with it. Redefine capitalism. Absolutely. OK. Let's finish. What do you mean. Hold on. Let's go. No I mean the whole idea of space technology and the amount of capital needed to accelerate space technology is very intense. It's very massive. And that's why we need collaborative efforts across countries or across nations if you will. And bringing along individuals while working in different sectors to understand the value that space brings to us from the point of solving climate change for example. But then these discussions are not happening with the right people. We are constantly the same people over and over in the same rooms. How can we advance this conversation to ensure that the right people are in the room and the right people here. I don't mean just white and male only. We need women in the table. We need young youth leaders on the table who understand issues in their communities and how space technology can actually solve that. If we have that and working with frameworks that actually makes sense then maybe we can redefine capitalism. But is your sense. I guess the question is is the capitalistic incentive structure the right structure for the new frontier. If you will. I don't know the answer to that question but can I just touch on this that I think it's super important. The whole of humanity has to redefine capitalism to take into account the natural capital. We have to every company has to measure its ESG targets. Every country must measure its emissions and we need to put that into the capital system otherwise we're going to screw up this planet. I mean we're on the course for that. Also to your point about what's right in the long term. I mean I think there's there is a good idea to think about new forms of capitalism. We went public just last year and we did so as a public benefit corporation and that actually writes in the mission of our company into the chart of the organization. Now the board of directors have a fiduciary duty to look at the mission which basically use space to help humanity basically is the mission of our company. And now they have a fiduciary duty to execute against that. And I think that's fantastic because this isn't just about dollars and cents. This is about building long term prosperity. And I think if we address big long term challenges that the world faces from climate change to security we will create real value. And that's the right thing. I think there's a trillion dollar economy around space in the next few years. But we should do it in the right way. Just not just I think space or especially earth observation is a tool or space in general but earth observation in particular is a tool which really can help people all over the globe because it's not stationed somewhere over a certain point because satellites do fly around and information which is gained is actually helping everywhere. I mean let's start with climate change. We would not know the massive for impacts of climate change if we wouldn't have satellites. So we only know what we know because we have this information. The other question of course is are we doing something about it. We're doing enough. But the information is there and we get them through this means. The other part. And I think that's extremely important that I really like your bit provocative statement Sylvia. I think we have to more much more massively use this data for Africa for other parts of the world and not only by white males as you as you call it. I think this is absolutely important and we'd have huge programs. We work with the World Bank. We work with Africa. Myself I was initiating programs in 2002 after the World Summit of Development in Johannesburg as we just said before this meeting here to really use space for sustainable development. The SDGs are using data from space. There's plenty of it. But you're right. We have to make sure this goes down to the people and into the hands of people and not just in some communities. I think there's a challenge and that we need to work more. I want to pivot the conversation in just a moment. But I do want to mention to the Web folks who were with us if you could get the countdown clock rolling because I do know that we are waiting for the space station to get into exactly where we need them so that we can we can actually make the connection which we're going to do. But I know that that countdown clock needs to needs to begin for us. I hope in just a moment. Here's where I want to go with you though politically. And it's actually kind of interesting because we're going to talk to Samantha in just a bit. There's a Russian astronaut up there too. Two of them. And how you think about the collaboration between certain countries that have by the way enormous background and expertise in space and what it means in the future given what's happening on the ground here about what that means in terms of future endeavors. I mean this Andrew has been my headache of the last couple of months and weeks to deal with the geopolitical situation and what does it mean for space. So let me just maybe in one or two sentences say what what happened after the 24th of February I immediately had to make decisions whether or not to launch X or Mars rover to Mars with Russia which was built up for 15 years. Of course within a split second after consulting my member states the decision was made that we suspend this cooperation and we do not launch with Russia. Of course this poses a huge problem now to me because we have a rover ready to be launched. It was about to be shipped to Baikonur and of course we could not which now we need to disentangle at least those components that that are Russian components and replace them with European ones or possibly from some other partners. So this is a huge thing we we had to do and we are doing right now in order to really disentangle the economy just as we do it in gas or in energy other energy oil gas and other domains where we have built up dependencies based on decisions by politicians at top level 20 30 years ago that we should work together and now suddenly we can't anymore. In space just here there's a 10 we got we got the 10 minute we just got the 10 minute countdown and now the clock is up so we're getting ready. So talking of the space station since we just heard the countdown is coming. Yes there we have Russian astronauts or cosmonauts up there together with our astronauts and US astronauts and they need to work together because if they don't there's a problem for them up there and for us down here. So there we have really no choice than other than to to work together make it work under and make sure that the space station is safe first and foremost and the people up there are safe. I can't say that it works on a routine basis because they just go about their job there's a huge program or for work they have every single day. They know they have to do this experiment to repair the station here to replace a piece of equipment or electronics somewhere else and they just do it regardless of nationality or color or whatever. This is it's important. But it's it's the way the astronauts are trained because they are really trained just to make sure everything is going well and it's going that situation now given that they're up there. But how's this going to change in the future. How does it change. Many of you have seen some of the announcements on Twitter space or other news outlets that there is that they might pull the plug and therefore not any more work together on the space station. It's not that easy to start with because you need both units to basically work safely together. Secondly I can say that despite the rhetoric which you've all seen it does work. It does work on a routine basis for whatever needs to be done. So I'm confident in very in everyone's self interest that the space station is safe and that the safety of astronauts and people is the top priority. And we continue doing that. And we're doing this in the daily program. You will hear it in a few minutes from Samantha. She is going about her business. Well I was going to come in that I want to say something slightly controversial that you know right now here and now of course we're we're we're in a tense situation with Russia. But one of the amazing things about the International Space Station is that it's continued to work to become hell or high water on the earth as a symbol of cooperation. Now it's a very difficult one obviously in this circumstance. But the Apollo Soyuz project was the first cooperation between Russia and the Soviet and the US during the height of the Cold War. It was the first place where they cooperated and then they agreed together to then build the International Space Station with the Europeans the Canadians the Japanese and others. And I actually think it's hopeful that we have a place which is a little bit above beyond the politics and that we go look long time we need to cooperate we need to be able to do that. I am hopeful that we will continue to keep space as a cooperative place including all players. There's tension right now about the Chinese and the US. For example I would love to see the Chinese and the US work together on the space station or a moon base it's probably the most natural thing because I think that could be a symbol of cooperation to bring things together. We can't completely decouple the discussions of decoupling the economies it's impossible and technology it's impossible the scientific community it's impossible. There's certain areas we must but there's certain areas where we must cooperate as well and I hope that it remains that theatre of cooperation as well. Let me take another example and of course the space station is a very visible one but the the other area where we need to work together we have no choice is down on planet earth for the future of our planet. Climate change climate change still exists despite geopolitical tensions maybe it may even be intensified. Climate change needs to be tackled by every single one. That means the information from all the countries from Europe from the US from Russia from China and everyone else. We need to work together to care for our planet and there we literally have no choice. How do you think about how some of the wealthier countries think about space relative to some of the more developing countries think about space. As I earlier mentioned it's it's it's normally a fundamental issue on the legislation and patenting and the research that comes off of space that impacts health or the health sector or the just general the internet in general and everything that is due to space. At the end of it all we are looking at countries that have resources are able to put this technologies in space and these technologies are able to help their people on the ground. Right. And incidentally you find that African countries have to pay huge amounts of dollars to access imageries and and to use this to either cooperate on food security or just disaster risk management in the monitoring of the environment in the African continent. But then at the same time the issue becomes to what extent to what end do we get to a point where spec spectrum allocation is available for various countries or the charity or the way maybe we'll launch as a satellite to space and then we have more than a hundred countries. We don't have a hundred countries. More than 50 countries trying to share on the on board on board of the satellite to launch this to get space to do research in their in their own way. But then that incentive has to come from various nation cooperating and being able to do that. Sylvia is saying access to data is crucial and just a minute and a half. Access to data is crucial and the Copernicus program which we have developed in Europe is providing free data to everyone at any place of the world. And this is something I've been fighting for more than 10 years ago now. And I'm very happy to say that these data which we do provide are for free to everyone. Of course you need an internet access. This is clear somehow accessing the data and we have been doing that. But this data we provide for free. And I think this is fundamental because as you say correctly this should not be a privilege of some white people somewhere in a rich country in other in other words but really for for everyone. And we have huge projects where we help people to get access to it through low end with technology. We're connected to space in 30 seconds. What do you want to say. I only want to say it's been democratized. It's the crisis are coming down exactly. So I think that countries in Africa can leap forward and come into the utilizing the value of this new data set where the free data sets are much reduced. We're getting the countdown five. No. We're not launching into space. We're getting very close. He actually has a GPS of where the station is the station is right now. And I believe that you can see right there. We're there. This is Houston. So what do we see. Are you ready for that. There's a fusion. Yes we are. This is you. This is this station. I'm ready for the event. You're being straight agency and participant. This is mission control Houston. Please call station for a voice check. This is ESA calling station. Are you ready for the call. Is this a station I'm ready for the event. Welcome aboard the International Space Station. So hello Samantha. Very nice to see you. We just met about a month ago when you were launched into space one day after your birthday which was a very special moment. Very happy to see you up there. You look very good and very good shape. And I see you all smiles. I'm calling here from Davos from the World Economic Forum and this is a very special event down here on earth. But you will tell us in a minute how it is up there in space. So I'm handing over to Andrew. Andrew is the moderator of this session and he will now moderate this part. Hi Samantha. It's great to see you. I know there's a little bit of a delay so I'm going to give it a little bit of time between between questions. We've been having a conversation down here on earth about actually a lot of things that are happening on earth as it happens. And I wanted to understand from your perspective in terms of your space exploration and your own research how important the future cooperation is between Russia and all of the various what we might describe as space economies are right now. Yes. Hello. Well first of all I'm very happy to be here to hear the voice of our director general and I'm very happy about this conversation we are about to have with you Andrew. And to answer your question with the short answer is it's it's quite important I would say I think that the International Space Station where I have the pleasure and the privilege of being right now is a testament to international cooperation and certainly Russia is an important partner in in this endeavor. But just in you know and the space station just to clarify is really an integrated facility where components of provided by different countries and different agencies are integrated together and really can function only as a whole in that include the Russian segment the U.S. segment and also this piece of Europe here in space which is the Columbus laboratory. So but in general space exploration is indeed I think an area of human endeavors in which international cooperation has proven key to achieve success and the ISS is really a testament to that. Maybe this is going to be a personal question but there are Russian cosmonauts on board with you. How is it working with them. Do you discuss what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening on the ground. You know I think that on a on a personal level we are we you know we are all sedent and devastated by the events ongoing in the current conflict and that's a fact but at the same time in terms of our relationships here on board. I think what prevails and and informs our relations and our work together on a daily basis is on a personal level our personal friendship to our colleagues whom we have known for quite quite a long time. And on a professional level our common commitment to the success of the mission and to continuing of the amazing work of science and technological advancement that we perform on a daily basis here on the International Space Station which again is a product of integrated work of many international partners. I was going to ask you given the challenges that we're clearly facing about inequality and climate change and we talked about that a little bit down here before we got to you. Can you tell everybody about the purpose of your mission and how how you would tell everybody on earth how you think it's going to ultimately help resolve some of these issues. Yeah I think that global big challenges like obviously climate change and inequality have our best faced when societies have at their disposals powerful tools and those tools are knowledge, technologies and general you know strong economies. And so I think that there's two ways of answering your questions. I mean of course I could go and go off and tell you about all the space based all the space based assets that monitor the earth on a daily basis. And some appear by the some of those are free flying satellites but some of those are here installed on the external platforms of the international space station because they benefit from the fact that they have this platform and not the power that is available and you know the data transfer. And so and you know and that it was possible to install them here. So I could go off and tell you that but I think that one should also have a more holistic perspective and understand that space is really part of our lives of our technological development of our scientific advancements. Ultimately ultimately of our you know economic resources and the technological and scientific resources that we overall have at our disposal to tackle challenges especially like like climate change. So as we develop space capabilities and the space economy that becomes a multiplier of all the technological tools that we have at our disposals to tackle climate change and you know all the great challenges that face humanity. What do you think you know we are in this this new era of space exploration and there are billions of dollars pouring into it in from the private sector. What do you think of that. And what do you think of what the private companies can and will do up there. Yeah I think that that is a very exciting and positive development. I think that a cooperation between the private and the public sector is going to bring us a lot of benefits. I think that the private sector when it comes in it probably brings an agility and ability to innovate you know competition that the power of the market economy when it's brought upon the space business is that it's bound to you know be partially disrupted but certainly help develop it make it more resilient make it more affordable from an economic point of view. So that again as I mentioned earlier of the space capabilities can really be leveraged from many diverse industrial societal economic sectors and you know space is not this thing out there and doing things on its own but it's integrated in the web of society and economy. So this is I think the benefit that bringing in a lot of commercial actors will bring. You know the as I mentioned earlier I'm here in Columbus the European Laboratory and Board externally to Columbus. We have an external platform which is an example of this public private partnership which is Columbus in the rack right next to me. There is another example which is the ice cubes research facilities. So you know also in Europe there is you know some of that private public partnership already ongoing and we're certainly striving to get that more and more. I want to turn the interview personal for a second. This is your second time up there. I've never by the way interviewed an astronaut in space before. So I want to know what it's been like and what's it like the second time. You know there's always conversations here about coming to Davos your first time and what's like the second time. What's it like the second time up there is a different. Have you did you bring different things with you. Are you getting better sleep. What is it. Just tell us about what the experience is like. The second time is very different. Not worse or better but different. I would say that the first time I came to space station as a rookie. It was quite overwhelming. You know all the way from from launch. It was this influx of new experiences new physical sensations new skills that I had to learn you know like like floating and in zero G and handling this rather complex environment of space station and handling the work up there or up here. And I think if I looked back at those especially those first days and weeks it was all a little bit of a blur. I didn't have very clear memories. And so I was really looking forward to come up here a second time as a veteran astronaut this time and have a little bit more of both cognitive and emotional buffer to experience this a little bit more in slow motion. And it's definitely been the case. I mean you know that I didn't have to learn everything from scratch. It came it came back to me fairly quickly like riding a bicycle I guess. And so I had that space in you know in my heart and in my mind to observe the experience and really take note of details and and hopefully also remember it better for for the future. What's the most exciting thing you're working on up there right now. Well this weekend we had quite an excited event. We actually had a brand new space vehicle. It's called a Starliner that sort of prototype the demonstration flight occurred this weekend. So the vehicle came knocking at our door in the night between Friday and Saturday I believe. And we had a pretty intense short docked mission in which it demonstrated in a number of capabilities. And then we closed the hatch last night and it will undock. And of course we are we are all confident that we will safely land to earth shortly after that. But yeah other than that I mean that there's always a lot of science on board is always difficult to pick a favorite. But I will let just see me to choose for me like what you may become glancing in the camera that I'm not supposed to touch but I set up yesterday is a facility to demonstrate telerobotic operations. So once we are ready to do the the demonstration operations I will actually use this. It's like a haptic controller. So I will hold it in my hand and kind of move my hand. But actually on the ground I will be moving remotely the hand of a robot to perform his tasks remotely. So that that's pretty exciting. That's stuff that is is going to be useful for future surface explorations of Moon and hopefully one day of Mars. And I don't know if this audience knows this and this is so cool. I think she has been a great champion of women and space engineers. And Mattel the toy maker has made and commissioned a Barbie doll of Samantha. And I just thought maybe you could tell us about that. How it came about. I don't know if you have one up there with you. But it sounds like a fact. How did that happen. Yeah. They have this campaign which I believe is like the dream gap campaign. And the idea is to provide young girls that really you know especially starting at a young age like preschool age with role models so that you know they don't they keep dreaming big. They do not start to think already like in preschool age that some professions are maybe not suitable for them. Some career path. Some you know some disciplines that they can study in college for example are not suited for them. That's what we want to prevent. You know what I encourage women to you know to to to consider STEM careers or considered working in the space sector. I don't necessarily have an end state in mind because I mean it depends in the end on individual choices on individual freedom which for me is sacred. But what I I hope to help accomplish is that you know young you know girls and women feel that freedom. They you know they they they make those choices knowing that they are free to choose from you know the full palette of of human enterprises. Samantha you're an inspiration. We are I'm super grateful to have this conversation with you. We want to thank you for joining the World Economic Forum in Davos from space. I hope we get to do this again and talk to you very very soon. Maybe we'll we'll call into a zoom together at some point. What time is it there for you. Do you have to go to bed. I don't know I don't know if it's the morning or night. It's about 10 to three so we should just be a couple of hours behind.  I thank you for your interest and for visiting me up here on the International Space Station. Thank you so much. That was fun. How often do you get to talk to her. Actually I talked to her soon after she arrived at the space station because there were two astronauts of visa there one from Germany and Samantha from Italy. And we had a connection with the leaders of space in those countries and myself which was about two and a half weeks ago three weeks ago. So I do have these conversations. I would say we three weeks to the three weeks. It's always fun. It's always but the best one I had and this was completely unexpected. It was on my birthday. I got a phone call from space by my astronaut up there. I was the best kid and I don't know how he knew but he called me and said Joseph this is your astronaut calling from space. Happy birthday. And this was fantastic. Are you guys going to space. What's what's what's what's the plan. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever the opportunity opens. Do you think that we're all going to be going. Do you think everybody in this room is ultimately going to be in space. I mean in our lifetime this is going to be a thing. Absolutely. I think it's a thing. I mean the prices are coming down. We're going to see it becoming more and more tractable. It's if you want to. I mean you so what are we going to be doing. Are we just going for the 11 minute ride or is there actually more to this than just to sort of the amusement of it. Well I think there is more to it than the museum. I mean I love the idea. I think the biggest thing will be split space tourism for a while. I don't think that's the biggest effect of space on as we said that this is a trillion dollar economy helping us to take care of the planet. But I think it's really. I mean just this experience again reminds us how inspiring space can be. How it can be a place of international cooperation despite the challenge on the earth as well as reminding us of the technology that it brings that help us and understand our climate understand our challenges on the earth. The same is true. Like when you know we're trying to image the earth to help everyone see what Samantha is seeing when she looks out the window. But of course there's nothing quite that's going to replace going up there and having a look for yourself and going up there. I personally love to go to the moon to see the whole earth from the moon because it would be four times the size of the moon is in the in the Earth's sky.  I mean wouldn't that be amazing to do that. If it's possible I'd love to go and I'm sure many people here will do in our lifetimes because it's it's it's in a space Renaissance and it's having dramatic changes the cost. When the astronauts come back of course I usually receive them in our astronaut center. And I asked them I asked everyone the same question I said look when when when you come down here what is your biggest memory and what what is your biggest impression you are you're having from space and what you want to convey and every single one in different worlds but everyone is saying look up there you see our planet very differently and I've become a very very sustainable person because I realize how thin the atmosphere is and how vulnerable our planet is it's beautiful but also very fragile and we have to we have to protect it. In fact one astronaut was saying I wish that every single citizen of this planet can come up to space and see it from there because then they would behave differently. Right. So what were you saying. I think most of the astronauts that go to space whenever they come back it's the change of perspective on how you are they are is a very tiny block from the International Space Station and then you get to see how insignificant sometimes you are as a human being and how cooperation and just collaborating together and loving on one another is important. You can't if you can't cooperate then we end up destroying our Earth and we do not know if really we have another Earth to go to. So we have to be very very careful. You don't see boundaries from up there. You don't see boundaries. You don't see different people. You see a planet and I think that that view would be very helpful for many of us. On that note I want to thank you all for the conversation. I want to thank you all for joining us.  Thank you. Thank you.


sounds good. All right so thank you all for joining me this afternoon on this Easter weekend. And our topic or my topic today is I'm gonna say our meat eating dinosaurs of Maryland and Virginia. As you know dinosaurs is one of my favorite topics. I've talked several times on this last summer. We did our first project where we had one of my students, Darian Bradley, collaborate with a lovely cast in Switzerland and did a comparison of the Jurassic of Switzerland with that of Como Bluff Wyoming which is mostly Jurassic in age. But recently due to COVID I've been stuck inside. I'm trying to figure what exactly kind of research I could be doing basically quarantined at home. And of course there are some fantastic resources. And one of the things that I stumbled across is a bunch of dinosaur bones from Maryland and also dinosaur footprints from Virginia. And that's gonna be the topic of this discussion.  I'm sorry the graphic is so small. Normally we think of you know we think of dinosaurs. You think of western states of the United States. You think of triceratops from the Hells Creek formation of Montana. Or you think of Colorado. Or you think of the Jurassic Como Bluff area of Wyoming or New Mexico. Yeah all along the spine of the or you know even in the Canadian Rockies you get some really nice dinosaur pie. But in this case I was surprised to learn that there's actually been a lot of dinosaurs found in Maryland. Hundreds of bones that I was not aware of. By the way you may notice that there's another avatar, Sontor Succas probably mispronounced and that's our good old good friend Alex Hastings who's here. And I'm grateful that he's he has come to join us and he's participated in this project in a couple ways that we're gonna be discussing. In fact there's several themes or threads that you're gonna see running through this talk. There's the science which I think is really interesting. But then there's the educational component. And I'm happy to say that I'm getting I'm getting a number of my high school students interested in this. And Abba Brooke is saying wasn't there an early one found New Jersey? The answer is yes. There was a Hadrosaur found by Edward Drinker Cope believe in the latter part of the 19th century. Hadrosaur in Virginia. No in New Jersey. And I've just learned that those dinosaur bones are now stored in Philadelphia at one of the museums that's there. In fact I just heard a talk from the American Museum of Natural History last weekend where a guy was talking about those bones. And by the way Alex Hastings feel free to jump in. If I'm off course, please feel free to turn on your mic or type some maybe if there's a question you can you can answer it. But anyway, getting back to the talk. Yeah, we were joking. I got Alex here by saying I'm an invertebrate paleontologist. What I'm doing talking about dinosaurs. I have no idea. So I'm grateful that he's here for his expertise. So anyway, if you zoom in on the map, the dinosaur bones we're going to be talking about come from Laurel, Maryland. And there's actually a whole park called Dinosaur Park that is that was found there. And they have a park set up mostly for young children. And this is a great idea to get kids interested in paleontology. Basically what they do is they open up a park and the kids can go in there and they can scratch her out and see if they can find any dinosaur bones. If they come across something that's really unusual, it gets confiscated and sent to a lot of these are sent to the Smithsonian. And we have Phil saying we know if dinosaurs made noise, they sound like birds or crocodiles. Certainly, I would think they made noise. There have been a number of studies done on the vocal cords. I believe the neck is trying to figure out what kind of sounds they made. I have no idea if they sound like birds or crocodiles. Alex, you want to take that one. A lot of thinking on dinosaurs. Okay, I'm glad you're jumping in on this. Alright, so that's the location. And feel free to throw answer questions in there. And if you don't know me, I have no problem whatsoever. Monitoring the local chat, I'll stop. And so what you want me to talk about, or Alex can put some information in there. Alright, so the formations we're talking about is are from the arid, adendale and the toxic formations in Virginia and Maryland. The adendale is the ones that have produced the dinosaur bones in Maryland. The Patuxent has the dinosaur footprints that have been found in Virginia. Keep in mind, we got dinosaur bones from Maryland. We do not have any dinosaur bones in Virginia yet. There are some experts like Rob Weems that says we don't have any Alex Hastings at lunch told me one time. He thinks there's just better time before we find it. And let's see. Shiloh is asking how old bones next slide shows the age relationships. So the Patuxent and the arendale are about the same age. Okay, if you zoom in here, you'll see the arendale is a little bit younger. They are Albion, or that is lower quotation, early cretaceous, whatever you want to say, think about 112 million years. That's the sort of number that I think about for these four actions that we're going to be talking about. All right, so how is it that how is it that we get information on dinosaurs? Okay, being that we're COVID and restricted. So last Christmas, basically, I was stuck inside. So I went to the Smithsonian Institution's website. And here's the URL collections dot nmn.si.edu backslash search backslash. And a good friend of mine, the Smithsonian told me about this resource about a year ago, and I finally had a chance to play with it. And if you haven't been to Smithsonian, they have an amazing website. They've got thousands of specimens that they've inventoried. And they also have many cases of pictures of the finds, some with scales and so on. We'll discuss. And the cool thing about this website is that you can actually filter it, the information. So you can go in there and you can say, show me information on all the fossils that have been found in Ireland, show me all the fossils that have been found in New Mexico. Or I want to see all the fossils from cretaceous age from Wyoming, or, let's say, Montanibus, which it has. You can go in there and you can say, I want to see any things that you had kind of raptors you have or velociraptors. So you can, you can filter by scientific name, you can filter by sort of common name. Now, there are some restrictions on that. So for example, you can go in there and you can say, I want to see all the ceritia, which includes meeting dinosaurs and long neck dinosaurs. Or I can go by the a fist, probably mispronouncing it, the ornithistia, which would include a lot of the other dinosaurs. But you can't narrow it down. If you said, show me all the theropods, those are the eating dinosaurs. There is no search link. And so you sort of have to make your way through the Smithsonian filter and do the best you can. But it is an amazing resource. And I do like the way the Smithsonian. All right. So I went through and I just started showing me everything from the early cretaceous from Maryland. And I got hundreds of fossils. And I'm going to show you some pictures of some of the fossils that pictures that I came up with. I thought this was an amazing specimen. It's the paw of a turtle from the early cretaceous. I see it's still a good discussion going on about dinosaur sounds. And if I'm going too fast, I know it's going to take a while for these things to res, let me know. And I figured that Alex Hastings was going to be here. So I figured I better put in a crocodile tooth. So there you go, Alex. And by the way, I contacted the, I contacted the Smithsonian, I said, do I have permission to use these pictures? And they said, absolutely, if you want to use them in talks or in science papers, all they ask is that I reference the specimen. So put in the location of, you know, if somebody wanted to actually go to Smithsonian and find it, they could. Although, unfortunately, the Smithsonian is closed now. Alright, so now let's get to the meat of, you will, of the talk, which is meat eating dinosaurs. Oh, yeah. Sumo, you asked a really good question. What are the units? And the answer is, I'm not sure. I'm not going, I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe Alex, you can address it, but I found some amazing pictures of dinosaurs, and then they put a scale there. And I'm not sure what the markings are. I presume they are millimeters. That is my guess. That would make sense, depending upon it. And there were a couple of fossils that had a regular scale. Yeah, a coin would have been better. There are a few specimens I found where they actually went to Walmart and got a regular scale. But in many cases, a lot of the specimens, all they had was this bar scale at the bottom. It looked like somebody had used a magic marker to put the markings there. And again, I'm not sure why they did it. They did.  And then I'm going to go back because I ran this, yeah, homemade, yes, scale bars. I gave this lecture earlier in the week to a friend on Second Life. And she said, show a picture of the dinosaur first, and then show the fossils. And I was debating which way to do it. So I said fine. So here is the most common dinosaur fossil that's been found in called Astrodon. It belongs to the scientific group, the sauropods. But we think of them as the ones with these are the four-legged long neck dinosaurs with the small heads, the same group as you would think of, deplodocus and adisaurus and brontosaurus, if that's even a dinosaur anymore. But there are hundreds of these fossils that have been laurel, beryl, and now unfortunately, this one I don't have a scale on. All right, so I'm going to flip back here. And here's some of the some of the fossils. And by the way, the scale, you want to talk about the scale of Astrodon. This gets a little tricky because a lot of the dinosaurs that we've found, or a lot of the Astrodon fossils are clearly from juveniles. So we're not talking about a dinosaur in Maryland that was hundreds of feet long. I'm guessing that Astrodon juveniles were probably on the range of maybe long, something like that. And that's going to be an important question. And I'm going to go I'll go back to a minute, shallow. But let me say a little bit. Here's a vertebrae of Astrodon. Okay, the backbone. Here's a femur or the leg bone of Astrodon. Here's the peg-like tooth of Astrodon. And I want to talk about where the name came from. When these fossils were first found in Maryland, they were sent to a dentist who decided to take a rock saw and slice through the bone. And what he found was that there was a star shaped pattern in the cross section. And he pointed astro meaning star and dot meaning tooth. So that's where the name came from. Right, the star tooth animal. And this guy was a planner, obviously, we're going to see some some meteors in a minute, we're getting there. Okay, this is not a, you know, okay. So anyway, Alex, do you want to say something about hooves? Not sure about not who's? Yeah, yeah. So it does kind of look a little funny in the art there. I think it's mostly because these don't seem to have had claws on the front, like you see in Diplodocus or Brontosaurus. So instead, it kind of just looks like the toes just end. So what these were probably a bit like an elephant, probably a little less kind of, like if you really look at an elephant's foot, they're kind of little nails, not exactly nails either. But anyway, so wouldn't have looked like that per se. But it wouldn't have been anything you would call a hoof like on a horse or something. So it's kind of its own thing, which is a little bit more frustrating. But yes, they are. And a lot of sauropods are actually pretty different between the front and the back feet. Alright, now we have a question of the back feet more like a croc. I mean, in that they have claws on them. So those would have been covered in keratin and crocodiles have claws, I would say it's kind of more similar to other kinds of, you know, dinosaurs, even including things like sauropods or serotopsians, just kind of having these these claw digits on the back feet. Okay. Alright, then we get to these guys. I give them interest. There were ankylosaur fossils that were found in Maryland. These things look like armadillos in the early Cretaceous, extremely well armored on the head and the back. And certainly, certainly they were going to need it. Okay, in a minute, we're going to talk about some of the meteors that are present. So this is what the dinosaur looked like. And this is what the tooth looked like. It's very distinctive. These in kylosaur teeth, they almost have a sort of a sore tooth triangular shape to them. So they're real easy to pick out. And there are a number of these in the Smithsonian collections. Alright, now it's time to get into, like I said, the meat of the topic, which is the meat eaters. And there were several meat eating dinosaurs. This lecture, I want to talk about two acrocanthosaurus. And I'm also going to talk about dinomictus. And we have a model of an acrocanthosaurus right below the slide viewer. Acrocanthosaurus gets its name. If you look at the dinosaur right below in front of the slide viewer, you can see that there were extensions along the spinal column. So the thing almost has like a little fin there. And Alex, do you have any idea why the animal would have this? I mean, it's certainly not going to be like a stegosaurus or metronaut. Is this a sort of some kind of heat regulatory thing or protection? So it's likely much too low to have function in that way that a lot of people think for like spina source that had very, very big pronounced ones. So this is probably more likely kind of a more of a ridgeback for musculature, particularly for the front end.  So that's the idea for acrocanthosaurus. Okay, thank you very much. Alright, so we have a question about, yeah, is the edge straight? Absolutely. We're going to talk more about in a minute. You notice that the tooth is recurve. I presume that's due to when the animal bites down the predator to it from escaping. That would be my understanding when you see a recurve tooth like this. So we have acrocanthosaurus. Here's a reconstruction of what it might look like. But I think it's even better in, well, and thanks to Chantel for getting some amazing dinosaur models to put around. Alex talked about aceratopsin. We have a styrocosaurus on the right hand side of the stage here with all the horns coming out of it. We have a, I guess should go from right, we have a T-rex on the far right hand side. And my understanding is acrocanthosaurus got up to about the size of a T-rex or maybe a little smaller. By the way, these were not contemporary T-rexes from the very end. Acrocanthosaurus was early cretaceous, so they're separated probably by maybe 60 million years. Then the next one to the left is styrocosaurus, is a ceratopsin or dinosaur that Alex just mentioned. Then we have allosaurus. The next one to the left, allosaurus, again, was not a contemporary of acrocanthosaurus. Allosaurus was mostly Jurassic. You get them in places like Como Bluff. I'm not changing the slides yet. I'm talking about the dinosaurs. There's a dominus rex. I'm sure it was that just a fictional thing in Jurassic Park. And then we have a styrocephalic, I can't pronounce these things, which looks like a Pachycephalosaurus or headbutting dinosaurs. Alright, so let's go on to the next one. Alright, so here is a dinonictus tooth. And we don't have a model of that, but here's what dinonictus may have looked like. It was basically a raptor. So the two main eating dinosaurs that we'll be talking about for the rest of this talk are dinonictus, a raptor like dinosaur, and acrocanthosaurus. We got wings on it. There was an expedition by the American Museum of Natural History to China and one of their latest expeditions showed that raptors had wings. And I asked Dr. Alex Adam Pritchard at the Virginia Museum of Natural History about what he felt was thought about a dinonictus that put feathers on the thing, would be his interpretation of it. Alex, how do you feel about feathers on dinonictus and raptors? Oh, heck yes. The evidence is pretty strongly supported. I will say that we don't have direct evidence for dinonictus or really any of the North American ones. But given that every single time we find any members of this group where feathers actually have a chance of fossilizing, not only do they have them, they have them like over their entire bodies. So I think it's really just the the preservation bias that we have in North America that we're not really getting that kind of soft tissue preservation with those. So I think really all of the quote unquote raptors would have been pretty feathery. Do we have any idea about pigment? I heard something that the feathers were black on these raptors, or anything about that? Yeah, so so the way pigment is worked out on fossil feathers is the cellular structures called molana zones that are actually creating the color, the pigment have a different shape depending on what color they are. So things that are like blue, red have different shape. So even though the color isn't actually there anymore, based on the structure of those molana zones, if they're preserved, you can figure out what colors they were. So there was one a few years ago called K-hong that had actually iridescence. I had the same kind of molana zones that we see in certain kinds of birds today that have that kind of would have been pretty black most of the time. But when they caught the light, right, they would have actually sheened, which is really cool. And we've been able to figure out in a couple other extinct things that have had birds as well to go to reds or black and white banding. So it's it's a new frontier. It's really fun. Yeah, we have a question from Scissor G about all of these things were endotherms or what my understanding is that they were based on John Desmond's book from the 70s, said a lot of arguments that dinosaurs were warm-blooded, you know, in terms of predator-prey ratios. Alex, any thought updates? Obviously, last time I looked at this was 50 years ago, has already changed. Yeah, the short end is it's not as simple as is hot and cold-blooded. There's it's actually a spectrum. And depending on what kind of dinosaur you're looking at, it seems to be, you know, further or closer to the warm-blooded spectrum side of the spectrum. So things that generally the going thinking is as you get closer to birds, you're more on the endothermic or the warm-blooded side. And you get into some fun stuff like gigantothermy, which is like you're so big that you're retaining temperature for things like the sauropods, the big long neck dinosaurs, the other really big ones, even if they're not closely related to birds particularly. So things like raptors and even things like tyrannosaurs are thought to have been fairly close to the warm-blooded side, maybe not quite in the same way that we see in birds today, but still retaining a good temperature in turn. All right, so here's what we get into the science part of it. There were a whole bunch of bones, ifat or teeth in the Smithsonian that were clearly labeled acrocanthosaurus. There were some that were clearly labeled dinictus. And then you got a bunch of them that had no labeling on them at all. They were just labeled ceritia. All right, so ceritia include, like I said, the meat-eating theropods and also the sauropods. Well, obviously this thing is not a plant-eat. No, it's not pey-like tooth that we saw earlier. This is from a meteor. So the question I ask my students is, we're going to look at these teeth, and there weren't a lot of them, but I asked my students in January 2, go ahead, or maybe it was December, to go through and do some simple measurements on these teeth and see if you could figure out are they close related to acrocanthosaurus or dinictus, or are they maybe a new genus of meat-eater? And we'll go to the next slide. So like I said, I assembled a team of students. And what we did was I picked some of the best students I had in Virginia, but I also had a guy from New York to the New York paleontological site that was interested in dinosaurs. So he joined the group as well. And so this was a collaborative New York Virginia project where I had students going through and analyzing which I thought was neat. And we did some very simple measurements. Okay, all we did was we measured the length of the tooth from the tip to the bottom. And then we measured the indentation, or the amount of curve here, call that I, and then across the bottom of the tooth, we call that the width, okay, which is pretty standard measurements. And being that we had this weird scale, we had no idea, we weren't even sure what the units were, I decided to play it safe and go with ratios. So it didn't matter, okay, what the units were. And I had the students plot on this axis, zoom in here, the on the x axis is the amount of indentation over the length, and along the y axis, we did the width over the length. And Alex suggested color coding points, which I thought was a great idea. So here you go, Alex. So the teeth that were from Dino nyctis are blue diamonds, the green acrocanthosaurus teeth are shown green, and then our unknowns are in red. And the first thing that we saw was overlap, there was no separation whatsoever, that we could clearly see between the Dino nyctis and the acrocanthosaurus, there wasn't a whole lot of distinction between our unknowns and either of the other two generand are granted. We don't have a lot of data here. You notice, you notice it's not a lot of points, there's a lot of scatter. Okay, along here as well. I had the students do averages and indentation over length for acrocanthosaurus was 0.126, or Dino nyctis was 0.121, and the unknowns was about 0.1. My students tend to think that if there were anything, maybe they were Dino nyctis was the idea. So then we had the idea of of going into the literature and both Adam Prichard and Alex Hastings sent me a lot of references that students and I could read over. And basically what we found out was that we're not it's not surprising that we had a lot of overlap that the characteristics we measured really are not great at distinguishing different genera. I we went through the literature we found out that things like the number of denticles the serrations per inch or per millimeter are considered a better characteristic for distinguishing different groups, things like the ornamentation of the crown at the tip, the surface features of the surface textures of the teeth are considered better characteristics in better ways. So anyway, what we did was we contacted several people to Smithsonian. And one of the things that I was really impressed with is that considering this was a high school project, the collections managers were very nice to us. They said, let us know any way that we can help you. What you're doing is exactly what the Smithsonian wants teachers to do is to be able to use these pictures to try to use some kind of studies. This was also sent to this was also sent to Richmond, Virginia, which is where the Virginia Department of Education is how is located and our education thought that this was amazing sort of research turns out we're about the only one that's doing it. But if ironic part of education past never was really on dinosaurs in earth science, but they really like the science that we did. So like I said, the Smithsonian is currently closed. I would love to be able to go to DC and examine these teeth in person and use better scale and make better observations of it. But I guess we're gonna have to wait until COVID is it's past. Alright, well, I'm not in Maryland. I'm in Virginia. And we don't have dinosaur bones or teeth in Virginia. But what you're looking at is the very latest dinosaur footprint that's been published by Dr. Rob Weems at the believe he's publishing this in the New Mexico bulletin of geology. And these are the latest footprints that he's found of a three toad theropod or meat eating dinosaur. And I think that these are the best pictures that I've seen best evidence I've seen for meat eating dinosaurs in Virginia. And sumo's asking so the dinosaurs went to Maryland to die. I don't think so. I think it's really weird, you know, you might say how come there are hundreds of bones of dinosaurs near Laurel, Maryland, but you just don't get anything in Virginia. And so now we're talking about taffani. Maybe it's because we haven't looked hard enough. Maybe it's because younger rocks of Centus Oak Age are covering the cretaceous ones, but it might be an outcrop thing. I know the Department of Mind, Spirals, and Energy has talked about this and Rob Weems has given presentations at the theology symposiums spring. And I point blank asked Rob what he feels about this. And he said that he doesn't think there are dinosaur bones in Virginia period. He said there's just too much water flushing through coastal plain. And you know, they just doesn't think they're preserved. I know other people have said maybe they are they are there and they're located around Danville, which is in southern Virginia. So I contacted folks at the Danville Museum of they have a little Natural History Museum there. And the curators there said, you've talked about that problem is the rocks around Danville are really hard to get access to. The enemies during the war months, what happens is that you have thick thickets and rush that grows on top of them. So even getting physical access to those rocks to try and look around is true. But you know, maybe people just keep looking who knows maybe we'll find something. Yeah, I say the same thing. I think it's naive to think with all the dinosaurs that have been found in Virginia and Maryland. And there are some in believe in North Carolina. We don't have any horn dinosaurs in Virginia, but there have been some found in the south, I believe Mississippi, there was a horn dinosaur tooth that was there. I think these things will walk it up and down the coastal plains. And 112 million years ago, there wasn't any barrier between Maryland and Virginia. So I think they were here. They just get preserved or maybe. And if Alex has more that he wants to say about that, be my guest. Yeah, sure. I can I can just jump in here quickly. I more or less agree with most of what you were just talking about. I'll say, in terms of actual fossil bone being found from the age of the dinosaurs, you're limited to the Triassic, which is the earlier part. And that's a time when dinosaurs were not nearly as abundant and widespread as the later parts of each of the dinosaurs. However, it's not zero. And we are finding bone from that time of other kinds of things. So even though the probabilities are against you, it's not zero. And in my opinion, if with enough of a concerted effort over enough time, eventually, someone will turn up an identifiable dinosaur bone within the Commonwealth of Virginia. But the odds are kind of against you. So it's it might take a very long time.  I mean, what's the harm? All right, so you bet you strike out, but at least you try to find the sense. I mentioned that there were armored dinosaurs in Maryland, these and Kyla source. This is a footprint that Rob Williams is found from Virginia that may have been made by one of these dinosaurs. There's a lot of footprints that Rob Williams is found around Fredericksburg, which is sort of the northeastern part of Virginia. And the last thing I want to do to wrap this up is show you this. You know, we're all familiar with Second Life, and we all love this platform. Obviously, it's a great way. It's a huge community, and it's a great way for people to get together and collaborate, share ideas, and you can res models like we have here. Problem is that Second Life is not so good when you're trying to use it well. And these days, what's happening is that more more students are going online for virtual learning, but they're doing it with Chromebooks. So even if schools would allow Second Life to be because in mind doesn't, Second Life is only available for teachers, not for students because of adult content that's here. So last year, I looked for another platform to use, and I came up with 3D Web Worlds, and I talked with the developer Yvonne DeBandy, and she was one happy to help. Yes, synergy. And what we did was I created a whole ecosystem on 3D Web Worlds. Here's a screen capture of what the ecosystem looks like. So I was able to import dinosaurs from Astrodon, Acrocanthosaurus. I put in a orthopod or a birdfoot dinosaur we got in Kylosaur there, with some labels underneath it. And the cool part is that you could actually log into 3D Web Worlds with a web browser on just about any computer. It could be a Mac, it could be a PC, it could be a Chromebook even, and navigate around and walk around. I'll put the here. I'm going to put the general log in here for those of you that want to try this. There is the general website for 3D Web Worlds, and this is a public sim that is on there. The cool part is that you're online done, so websites based. 3D Web Worlds is what I mainly use with my students. I just put the website in there. And you can go to that. Here's the beauty of this. You go to that website. There is no download. There's not a client to use. You do not have to create an account. I mean you can log in there with a guest login if you wish. So you just go in there, we click guest login. And then what you want to do is search for Cretaceous. I meant to get you guys a direct link. And there's only one Cretaceous sim on there and boom, you're in. Somebody wants to try to be my guest. There are signs that you can tell around the sim. There are boxes or prims that I put in front of each dinosaur that are labeled learn more. So if you mouse over, then you can actually you'll get a pop up and it'll tell you a little bit more about each of these dinosaurs. But like I said, this is a great alternative for if students can't get into second life either because of technology or you know it's blocked by schools. You know this is another way for them to go in. Students can also create their own account just like you would in 3D Web Worlds or what I do is I create accounts for my students so that I know who's who, but their privacy is protected and then they can go in as an avatar just like we would in second life. And there's chat, there's voice, so you could hold a lecture like this. There are, I think you can also do a slide projector. It's a little trickier than second life, but there's a lot of number of other options. And I believe, yeah, I'd like a copy of the chat too. If you right-click, Andre, and click select all, and then you can do a copy, I believe. Oops, let's try this again. Select all. Yeah, and copy. Then you can just paste it into your favorite text program. Click on the bubble button. Alright, and I purposely ended early because I know that, yeah, thank you, Shiloh. Shiloh just sent me the transcript of this. I purposely ended early, so this way, if you guys have questions, feel free to bring them up right now. And I'm sure Dr. Hastings and I will do the best we can to answer them and get you guys out in an hour. What's the name of the... Alright, let me go in there and find it. I meant to do it beforehand and I didn't. So let's do it now. I'm gonna log in with my account. And while you're doing that, I'll answer. There's a question about T-Rex. I've heard that big raptor... Oh shoot, I just lost a question. I've heard that big raptors like T-Rex. T-Rex isn't a raptor. They have lost many or all of their feathers as they matured. Is this thought to be true? So there's a lot of back and forth on would T-Rex have been feathered. Again, so T-Rex is found in places where soft tissue preservation really doesn't show up very well. So things, delicate things like feathers don't have a very good chance at it. There are a couple of cases where there's been sort of skin impressions found in certain parts of the T-Rex body that some people have argued means that it would have been fully unfeathered. However, with the discoveries particularly of Dialong and Euteranus which are both kind of relatives of T-Rex, but kind of lower or earlier on the T-Rex family evolution, they would have been, they were pretty darn feathered across their whole body. And the idea is that that would have been something women carried on throughout the rest of the family. So if T-Rex didn't have feathers would have been a loss of feathers in order to account for that. Now, because there's kind of evidence pointing in two different directions people are kind of, you got the situation where people on like one camp or the other more or less. So I'd say the science is really just not settled yet on T-Rex. I'll say even if it wouldn't have been like big pronounced feathers or something like that they still might have been kind of these much more subtle feather-like features. So something similar to like a hair on an elephant like they're not a particularly hairy animal but they do have hair kind of thing and it in my opinion is at minimum that. But it's new progress to be made there. All right, I found something even better for you guys. All right, I just put a link in local chat and if you click on that link it will open up a browser and boom it'll take you right to the center. You won't have an avatar but you will be able to navigate around using your arrow keys. I think this is so cool to give you an idea about how far the technology has come that we can actually run a virtual world in a browser with no download no account. One click boom you're in. All right and I can't tell you how cool this is. Now if I'm looking for a resource for my students and you know I'm you're working in a learning management system such as Ambis and I just want to put a link in there for the kids to go in and take a look around. I see this as the next sort of level of a sort of evolution in our instructional process because we all know that there's too much zoom going on. Teachers use learning management system like Canvas or Blackboard and Zoom and the kids are just had enough with it and how cool is it for them to say we're going to go on a virtual field trip right now and boom you're in. And like I said if you go to the trouble of creating an account which is not too hard they're free on 3d web worlds you know you can go in there you can use voice you can do a virtual field trip. I could tell you I know the person that runs 3d web worlds and she has told me there will be zero adult content on that platform okay there's not going to be any vanity, nudity, violence, anything and we have a bunch of teachers on there that are constantly going to the Sims on web worlds if any inappropriate content is found we report to her immediately and boom it's gone it is wiped out. So I think it is a very cool platform that I hope we use more of. The other thing that I want to mention is that we are in the process of writing a paper on this and publishing hope to publish it in the New York paleontological society notes this spring the manuscript has already been submitted and I talked to the editor and he's looking it over and all the students that worked on the project are going to be authoring it which I think is awesome to get students involved in you know into actually doing science to investigate something I have some of my students are young and here's the tricky part a lot of my students they can they can you know get the dinosaur teeth and they do measurements on it they'll come with a conclusion I haven't found many high school students that are at the point where they're willing to write something up the New York student is 17 and he's doing more the writing which I think is the next step in developing the next generation of scientists is getting students to not only do the research but to analyze it and then write a coherent paper on it um I talked with uh Jim Beard at the Virginia Natural History and he told me Bill for students that want to go into geology or paleontology or any science please have them work on their english he said I'm the editor of a major geology journal and he said you would be amazed at the garbage that comes across my desk that adults scientists think is appropriate for publication in a journal uh they're you know just filled with grammatical uh errors and so on and often I have to send it back just I can't even um I can't even understand what you're saying um so certainly english skills are something that we encourage and it's projects like this that I think are what uh the Department of Education calls authentic learning experiences I hope that this signals a transition away from the can multiple choice standardized test what I call the fast food approach to education um that might feel good in the moment to decision makers and Pearson but actually does not uh nourish the educational health of our young people um yeah as soon as gee it's it's I they were actually got in the journal um I'm just saying that I think this is the trend that we want to go in so I'm excited by this project I'm hoping that when the Smithsonian opens again I can go up there and actually uh go through and and I see these teeth a little bit more um like I said now I think I'm better prepared to to study these things anybody else have any other questions or about either the educational side of this or the scientific side oh I've got one other thing that I want to add as long as we have time um and this is a project that I'm working with Adam Pritchard about is um when you go if you go to that link that I just put in local chat and go into 3d web worlds uh by the way if you log you're not going to be able to see anybody else this is what they call portals so it's a single player uh way of accessing the simp you can walk around but you can't see anybody uh one of the things you're going to notice is the dinosaurs are animated and I talked with Ivan Debandy who helped me with setting up the simp she did a lot of landscaping and even taught me about the how you do animation you start with a mesh and then you go into a program called blender and uh there are a number of things you have to do in there in order to get the animation to work and then you bring it you know into the 3d web worlds yes max and one of the things that I noticed as I was doing this is the parallel I mean stay a 3d modeler and somebody that studies the anatomy of dinosaurs because basically when you go in blender when you when you download these meshes sketchfab sometimes you just get the mesh you'll get some bones and then it's surrounded by the skin but um to we call this process rigging you can actually add bones to a dinosaur model it turns out I think there are a lot of parallels between rigging a 3d model of a dinosaur and trying to understand how the anatomy of a dinosaur really worked you know only find the bones so I'm talking with Adam Pritchard this is Alex one of the side projects that I hope to get together with Adam on some time because Adam is playing around with blender too is can we use 3d models of I know I'm learning a lot more about the bones you know about femurs and tibia and that sort of thing and you can actually in blender you can actually go in and label the bones that you put on the dinosaurs so I see this as a great way of learning about dinosaur anatomy or anatomy in general maybe this is a way of sort of a crossover between biology where's Steven and paleontology and I know that I've got I had one student her name is Lindsay Yat who got her PhD and teachers paleontology and but also does anatomy because and Sumo's right blender is a great program it does have a steep learning curve and all I can say is you don't have to learn all but in one shot there are some simple things that you can move blender there's a huge number of of video tutorials in YouTube so it's really just a matter of playing around with it and see what happens but Alex what do you think about that that you know this project Adam and I are talk about using 3d models of dinosaurs to better understand or dinosaur I mean it's excellent it's how a lot of things are done at least in certain labs and really getting into the full potential of biomechanical modeling and kind of working in muscle segments like from the bones up it does tend to get very data intensive so you end up needing kind of some pretty powerful graphics systems to actually process that kind of thing but you know anything you can do in along those lines I think will be really informative for students but it's also there's a whole other foray that's not even really scientific but getting into the uses of these things in animations and in like video games and stuff like that which is a whole giant billion you know multi-billion dollar industry where they're starting to actually think about these things in that kind of more scientific way so there's kind of other applications that this kind of lesson could have which is really you cut out oops yeah one of the things we ran into was I started with models of dinosaurs and then they call them bones in blender but the bones have more of a polygonal polygonal shape and I know Adam wants bones that actually look like dinosaur bones and there was a question of hey we could do 3D scans on actual dinosaur bones and then it becomes a matter of in order to get a realistic bone inside of these virtual dinosaurs you really need doshits you talk about thousands of vertices to model them correctly and that'll bring even a game right to its knees just trying to get bones to look right within the models and then build the skin on top of them so I'm not sure how accurately we could put real looking dinosaur bones inside the models but like I said I'm learning a lot more about dinosaur anatomy Mike said he's using blender to process molecule and protein models from x-ray data yeah that and the other one is 3ds max I'm a huge fan of 3ds max is a 3d modeling program and Tav Scott saying Jack Horner explored SL when SL couldn't handle the things you discussed oh really I didn't know that Tav sooner G ask it again please I'm sorry I've had a flood of questions and I'm sure I'm missing something because they're coming through the chat really fast and I know Alex and I are doing the best we can to field them so please if there's there's still time we got five minutes if there's a question that you raised that did not get answered then post it again please why is there a front back foot difference in astronaut uh yeah so I I did get that but it might have gotten buried in the the rapid fire stuff in here so but the the short end is I'm trying to get an answer in real time here but so far as I'm seeing that there's not like a good front foot preserved of astrodon so I'm guessing that that illustration was a bit of a guess and what we see in some other kind of uh sauropods is that they're they kind of toes just kind of come more or less to a column so it's really just about supporting the front end in several kinds of sauropods they're they're kind of a little bit more front heavy so you see kind of bigger and more robust front limbs versus back limbs so the idea is that they have a better degree of flexibility in in the back legs so if you do need claws for a particular task it's better to kind of reserve this and the one that's a little less weight bearing where you have a little bit more ability to use them and really a lot of the adaptation is just in supporting the weight to go with this selection towards this you know extreme body size yeah I think tagline is footprints might be a good way of looking at function and I know people have looked at uh footprints where they're preserved I mean sometimes like a t-rex you only get one print if you get a trackway like at cull pepper you might start being able to make and I know Rob has done this he's looked at he started plotting out uh footprints cull pepper is those of Triassic Age rocks but maybe 230 million years old where we've got hundreds maybe thousands and he's actually started looking at mapping those footprints and he can actually make out Trent suggesting that the dinosaurs were walking along a shoreline of an ancient lake so there have been efforts to try and turn behavior based on footprints and we don't mean to ignore anybody if we missed your question please post it again as Alex said it's been rapid fire so Berrigan is talking about the the rarity of footprint tracks suggesting that they they didn't like places that were muddy I suppose a lot of us don't really like walking through mud if we don't have to there there is a sort of a difference in how footprints fossilize or can be preserved versus bone and they're usually not the same so typically when you do get fossil tracks in a good kind of setting for it you often get more than one so like the the cull pepper mine in Virginia is a really good example of that because there's actually thousands of them there because the the circumstances were right and dinosaurs were walking through but there's like no bones preserved there at all because it's a different kind of context so that's why we don't tend to see you know a direct association between those two and it actually creates a problem to then figure out what dinosaur made the tracks so it's kind of more of a geological settings more so than that they're necessarily rare it's just it takes the right kind of circumstances to get them in the first place yeah i mean it almost reminds me of the old paintings that i saw at the American Museum of Natural History where a hundred years ago they used to draw pictures of sauropods in water because they felt that these animals were so heavy that their legs wouldn't be able to support them and and then later paleontologists go you can't put an animal that big in a pond and have the water support it because the mud on the bottom would make it sink in or in some case they even add the water up to the level of the neck of the dinosaur which makes no sense because now the water pressure is going to crush the the wind pipe so there there've been a number of changes in the way that we look about dinosaurs and and how what their ecology was like yeah that's that's absolutely true and i i you know i'm not that old but i still remember my kids book still having the the sauropods the long dinosaurs in swamps and one of the ideas was that because you do see that uh and a lot of them the nostrils are pretty high up on the head a bit like you see kind of in whale so they're thinking like oh okay these things would have been you know just tipping their head up to the surface there to get some air and they'd you know spend their whole time in the water but it really doesn't make sense for a bunch of reasons not least of which being the environments in which we find them are not like that um in terms of why the nostril migration there's still not like a great answer behind it um one thing that we it does seem consistent though with these giant animals that they would have had to been basically feeding every single waking moment so even just the simple thing like getting your nostrils away from your mouth might actually enable them to um kind of feed more continuously more easily and that might have been enough of a factor to kind of see that happening within the natural selection process to see that those nostrils migrating backward a bit all right just anybody else have any questions we're almost at two o'clock I like to try and wrap these things up in an hour and thank you so much Alex for coming uh I'm glad you were here otherwise this would have been very embarrassing by some of the questions I got and maybe this is something we need to do have sort of an online ongoing dialogue about these uh about these animals yes Phil found a picture thank you that's what I was thinking of yeah all right I'm gonna head out and um do some lawn mowing and stuff around the house Shiloh how was our reinterpretation no understanding reinterpretation of geology I'm not so sure um you find fossils to try um I'm not sure how much it's changed your understanding of geology Shiloh um it's certainly changed the way that we look at these animals all right like I said if you have more questions then I'll be around at uh I'm coming back to second life so long everybody