And I need your help to make it happen. Science Hack Day has open sourced a guide on how to organize a community of geeks to come together and make awesome things over a weekend. No experience in science or hacking is necessary – the mission of Science Hack Day is just to get excited and make things with science! Science Hack Day was created out of this frustration that there’s actually a lot of open science data and stuff out there, but often no one is doing anything interesting with it.

This is where you come in. Science Hack Day should be in your city – it just needs someone like yourself to take charge and assemble a friend or two to help make it happen. And you have me – I’m available to help you make it happen by advising and supporting your efforts wherever I can! Science Hack Day isn’t an organization/company – it’s just a loose grassroots network of people like myself who are into thinking about weird/amazing/useful/fun stuff you could mashup and play with. So, it only happens if you create the event and run with it. There are already Science Hack Days lined up for 2013 in six countries: Cyprus, England, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands, and USA. I’d love to add your city to the list of places that are getting excited about hacking science – and a few more countries, as well!

Speaking of getting excited, I’m excited to announce the 2013 Science Hack Day Ambassador Program. Thanks to a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (the Gordon Moore who famously came up with Moore’s Law!), 5 people interested in organizing a Science Hack Day from around the world will be selected to win a scholarship for a trip to Science Hack Day San Francisco. The selected five will be flown in from around the world to San Francisco where they’ll get to experience first-hand how Science Hack Day works and connect with a global community of organizers. Science Hack Day San Francisco will be September 28-29 at the California Academy of Sciences, where we’ll get to stay in the museum overnight and hack the planetarium, among other cool things. If you or someone you know might be interested in organizing a Science Hack Day, please do apply to the Science Hack Day Ambassador Program – we’re accepting applications until May 1, 2013!

More about Science Hack Day can be found at http://sciencehackday.com, including upcoming events, sponsorship information, examples of science hacks, etc. For anything not answered on the website, feel free to send me an email at ariel@sciencehackday.org.

Yay, science!

I’m excited to announce one of my latest collaborations to you all! Last month, I was appointed as a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee member of a congressionally-requested study on the future of human spaceflight. The Committee on Human Spaceflight has been tasked with a study to review the long-term goals, core capabilities, and direction of the U.S. human spaceflight program and make recommendations to enable a sustainable U.S. human spaceflight program. The committee has enlisted an incredibly accomplished group of diverse individuals, including a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and a physicist who worked on the science mission operations for Apollo 16 and Apollo 17. To say that I am extremely honored and humbled to be collaborating with such an amazing group is an understatement.

The committee’s first meeting was held at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. and featured a number of highly acclaimed speakers, including NASA Administrator and former astronaut, Charlie Bolden (who I was able to ask a question to after his presentation). SpacePolicyOnline wrote up their summary of the public meeting.

Apart from discussions held in public sessions of its meetings, the committee’s private deliberations are confidential (so please don’t ask me to comment on it), but you can learn more about the committee’s statement of task, oncoming meetings, ways to communicate with the committee, and information on the other members by visiting the committee’s project information on the NAS website. The consensus report is estimated to be delivered in mid-2014.

On Twitter the other day I had mentioned possibly putting together a mixtape of my favorite science-y songs. I decided to narrow it down to a few space-related tracks that are by artists I already love (there are plenty of science-y songs that don’t make for great music). In the spirit of Spacehack.org, I’ve dubbed this my Spacetrack. I’ve embedded a Spotify playlist at the bottom.

Florence + The Machine :: Strangeness & Charm (mp3)

An entire song about particle physics! Strange and Charm are two types of quarks (a basic building block particle in the universe) that can be observed in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider. I was super excited when I discovered this track for the first time and was curious about the inspiration to dedicate an entire track to particle physics. Florence Welch explains:

“I was having a conversation with my father and he was talking about this thing – strangeness and charm. It’s actually the name of the two smallest particles that there are when you split the atom, so I wrote a song around it. I even managed to fit the word ‘hydrogen’ in there. Isn’t that a nice thing for scientists to call them though? – it’s so unscientific and human.”

Andrew Bird :: Darkmatter (mp3)

A great track with great lyrics about becoming interested in the game Operation and developing morbid fascinations. To me, becoming fascinated with morbid or weird things is at the heart of every great science geek (hence my fascination with creepy awesome sea slime). The song goes on about developing a gun that shoots rays of dark matter, which sounds pretty awesome to me.

Digitalism :: Jupiter Approach 

I would like to think this would be the appropriate type of music to listen to while in a spaceship on a slow approach to Jupiter. By the way, if you haven’t had an explore of NASA’s Juno (a probe headed for Jupiter) mission website, please take a moment to do so now – it’s filled with great music (Underworld!) and beautiful graphics. The site is a bit heavy/slow, but I’ll forgive them since the concept once it gets going is pretty inspiring. I wish all NASA missions could make such inspiring sites.

Underworld :: Between Stars (mp3)

Speaking of Underworld being a great artist to listen to while on your way to Jupiter, I also love this track by them. Something about “clinging to the outside of the Earth under a full Moon” in the lyrics is a cool way of putting ourselves into perspective. I’ve been obsessed with Underworld since I was 12 and they were a big inspiration to me while I went through art school, so it only makes sense that I adapt them to inspire my career in space exploration.

M83 :: Another Wave From You (mp3)

I’m not sure if this specific track is inspired by space exploration, but the entire Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming album by M83 is definitely something to listen to if you ever find yourself on a journey through space (or maybe just a relaxing time at home). Obviously, there’s the name of the band to take into consideration: M83, a spiral galaxy. When I was filming my TV spot for the SyFy channel earlier this year, they were originally thinking about having M83′s Midnight City track to be the backdrop music for the spot, which I think I literally jumped with excitement about and quickly explained to the director that M83 was the name of a galaxy so it’d be a perfect choice for it. I think he gave me the “okay… you’re quite a geek” look after that :)

Fast Company has an ongoing series titled “Generation Flux” that recently featured my story of how and why I got into space exploration and science.

And, if you’re in San Francisco, check out the October issue of 7×7 magazine – I’m featured in their “Hot 30″ list! The photoshoot was quite fun (even though I’ve got my serious “mad scientist” face on). A quick correction to the article: the very first Science Hack Day was conceived of and created by Jeremy Keith.

I often struggle with an accurate “title” for myself when people ask what I do, but this month I’ll stick with these two articles and go with something along the lines of a “mad rocket scientist”.

Here’s a couple of test shots taken during the photoshoot:

“The Tomorrow Project explores our possible futures through fact-based, science-based fiction and video conversations with scientists and science fiction authors, legends and world renowned experts, passionate advocates and everyday people. Science fiction gives all of us all a language so that we can have a conversation about the future and these conversations make dramatic changes.”

I have been thinking for a while about how the act of hacking embarks on the same exploration of not-yet-defined futures that science fiction often does. Just look at the types of hacks that have emerged from Science Hack Days. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be presenting a new talk at dConstruct that hopefully wanders through some of my recent thoughts in this area.

Part 1: Breaking Down Barriers

Part 2: Hacking For Good

Part 3: Non-Binary For The People