Shore Leave 44 Guest: Timothy C Miller
Dr. Miller is the Chief Scientist of the Seeker and Information Processing Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD, where he works on various NASA space and astrophysics projects. While hunting astrophysical neutrinos earlier in his career, he traveled to Antarctica six times and to Greenland once. He also received a NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) grant to look at measuring the depth of the ice sheets on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, a possible first step toward the search for life on such moons, by detecting the interactions of ultra-high energy neutrinos from an orbiting spacecraft. He's previously given presentations on DART and Antarctic astrophysics research at Shore Leave and other conventions. He's recently served as the Image Analysis Lead on NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which successfully impacted asteroid Dimorphos in 2022 as NASA’s first demonstration of planetary defense. Dr. Miller will tell us all about DART and NASA's planetary defense program in general, including contrasts between Hollywood versions of the concept and the real thing.