And our adler members here tonight. And for those of you who would like to check out the planetarium, theres a free admission pass at our front desk, so stop by and grab one of those on the way out if you have not been. We are thrilled to be working with the adlers to present tonights program. If you dont have a book yet, you can pick one with up from our bookseller partner at seminary coop there in the back. Were here tonight to welcome sarah parcak and lucianne wall wits to talk about walkowicz. The story of the extraordinary new world of space archaeology is a story of how we see ourselves. Through spy photographs and satellite imagery, we can look thousands of years into our history and discover what would otherwise be completely invisible to us. Sarah has worked on five continents and over 20 years of experience in the anthropology field including as a National Geographic explorer. Her work has been the subject of three bb specials, and she was a 2014 senior ted fellow and winner of the 2016 ted prize. Shes joined by lucianne at the add orler planetary Adler Planetarium in chicago. How stars influence a planets suitability as a host for alien life. Shes also an artist and works in a variety of media from oil paint to sound. Welcome to both of you. [applause] hey, everybody, thanks for coming. [laughter] so sarah and i have known each other for several years, so it was like a really wonderful supply when we were, like, will you talk to this, like, space archaeologist person, i was, like, how long do you have . [laughter] so, you know, i guess we had talked a little bit back stage, and i kind of wanted to kick off just by talking first of all, congratulate sarah on her book, please. [applause] thank you. Has anyone here read it so far . I see at least one copy tucked into the thing. All right. I have partially read it. In the interest of full disclosure with. [laughter] but i wanted to hear a little bit about how the book came around because, you know, being here in the American Writer withs museum, i thought it would be fun to talk not only about space and archaeology, but also just about writing. Yes. So it all started in 2016 shortly after i won the ted prize, and my tv agent had been poking me for a while and saying, you know, you should really write a book. And i know authors, and i said, yeah, i know better than to write a book. Despite what where am i going to find the time . Ive got, you know, a young child, im trying to kick off this big platform, i really need to think about writing a book. Its time. And i think id written an academic book, and to me, that seemed much easier than writing a book for the general public. I can give an hour talk, i can give lectures. The idea of writing something that was in the range of 80,000 words that people would actually want to realize, i joked that if you are having trouble sleeping at night, you should buy by textbook and realize the first two pages of the third chapterrer, and if youre not asleep, you must be a specialist. So i think in the process of thinking about the book proposal and thinking through all the books that were out there for the general public about archaeology, first of all, there really arent popular books about archaeology by women. And i think in academia right now were having a bit of a moment for women, for people of color, the idea of making the field more diverse, making space open for other people. And to me, thats incredibly important. So the idea that i could write something and show people not only can you do it, but its necessary, and we need to provide these opportunities for other people, that became important. And were natural storytellers. The joke in archaeology is one stone is a stone, two stones are our future, and three stones make a wall. If you find four stones together, you probably found a temple. So the idea that were weaving all this evidence together, that became really important for me, for me to do. So thats really what drove me to write this. Its funny that you mention that, because i think that this is something that people dont realize about science, like physical sciences as well, that, you know, like, one data point is, you know, a potentially interesting discovery. Two is a line with no error bars. Three is definitely a line and four is, like, totally a trend in the universe. [laughter] so theres a certain element of storytelling, i think, that comes with it as well. It might be helpful im not totally sure that everybody is familiar with what exactly is different about the archaeology that you do and what a space archaeologist actually, it might be helpful to give a quick recap of that. Sure. So in archaeology, of course, we spend a lot of our time looking for things, and were assisted by a lot of tools on the ground to help us see beneath the ground to figure out where walls are buried. But when were dealing with mass land scapes, prior to Aerial Photography and satellites, it was really hard to figure out where things were. Its the use of different kinds of satellite sensors and airbased sensors to map and model ancient landscapes. Think of it almost like a spacebased cat scan system where you have buried features, sometimes things like pyramids, sometimes things like houses. And the stones and materials that are under the ground affect the overlaying vegetation and soils in very subtle ways that we cant see with our naked human eye. But the satellites recording the earth or record all this information and different parts of the light spectrum that we cant see, and all of a sudden theres popouts in the landscape. And instead of maybe being able to map for survey 10 or 15 sites over the course of a season, we know exactly where to go, and we can find hundreds, if not thousands of sites very, very quickly. But in archaeology its not about the finding, its about the finding out. So what we do is we can its science. Its hypothesisdriven research. How and why did civilizations rise or collapse, how or why did this city grow in importance and then all of a sudden wasnt important, and maybe its because a river changed course, and all of a sudden that city lost main transportation routes. So these are the kinds of things we can look for using satellite imagery where we know exactly where to go. So talk to me a little bit about, like, what your actual data looks like. So this is, essentially, like digital the photography in the same way that, you know, i think in astronomy people often have that picture which, you know, if you come to the adler, youll see a whole bunch of telescopes including those that look exactly what you think they look like. But nowadays telescopes well, small ones look like that, but the telescopes that professional astronomers use, my job looks like me in front of a laptop. People want to interview me, are you doing anything cool . Yes, but it just looks like me in front of a laptop. [laughter] fundamentally, thats me too. [laughter] yeah, its not well, to me its really exciting because, like most scientists, we spend our time in long Conference Calls and writing graphs and writing reports, and anytime i do science its really exciting. But it doesnt look exciting. But in archaeology we go from the known to the unknown. So we never i tell people, some people seem to think ive got like a magical harry potter wand, and the ghostly outlines of a city just appear and its there in 3d, is and maybe that goes on in my head, but that is absolutely not how the science happens. So what we do if were looking at a particular landscape, say egypt, and were working in an area with lots of pyramids and lots of tombs from over 2,000 years, we develop databases of all the known archaeological sites and features in that area, wherever in the world were working. And then we start look at the landscapes and the geology, is there sand, any kind of elevation, is it hilly, what are the sizes of features that are there, what types, pyramids, tombs, settlements, and we start looking at all the pictures of everything thats there. And this is before we even order the satellite imagery are. Because youve got to know what youre looking at, you have to know if theres any meant of anything any hint of anything beneath the ground. I should say im pretty honest in the book about times when i was wrong. Its good to be honest about science. Science is a long process of iteration and repeating and hoping you get something right, 1 out of 1,000 times if youre lucky. And so when youre processing the imagery, its in phases. So youre doing work, and youre teasing out information, youre teasing out information very slowly with different kinds of algorithms, and finally you might see the hint of an outline of a shape, and you focus on that area. And when you find manager that works in one part of the image, you extrapolate. This is a super collaborative project. Im Never Working by myself, im always collaborating with my friends and colleagues in egypt or in iceland or in cotland, and scotland, and were constantly sharing information. Theres never a hero archaeologist, its im always part of a team. Give or take an Indiana Jonesesque leather jacket. [laughter] guilty as charged. Your honor. So this is the part that im very jealous of, is that you actually get to go to the place that the thing youre looking at is and check it out, which is really, like, not an option not yet. For the most part. [laughter] so i guess id like to know a little bit about the process of that. You know, you to all of this recon on the images that you have. You actually order new data, so new satellite images to be taken. At what point do you actually get to go there, or, like, are there places that you get to go . If when do you find out if youre wrong . [laughter] so usually what we do by the sort of collaborative process and if im working with my team at an Organization Called global explorer, well all look at imagery, well all crosscheck each other and maybe come up with a top ten list of interesting things we think look like features that are known or excavated already, and well send those to specialists. And lets just say its in a place like scotland. So we send them off to specialists in the viking period, and theyll write us back and say, you know, features 1, 8 and 10 look amazing. I do not know what you were spoken when you were looking at 2 and 3, but nothings there. I think these three things are definitely worth checking out, and honestly, id go with 8. That looks the best to us. So we rely very heavily on the specialists. Obviously, im an egypttologist, but in other parts of the world i do rely on other experts. Sometimes it can be pretty quick if were already collaborating when we know were going to a particular place in the next month or six months, then well go. In egypt the permitting process is a little different. Ive been working at a 3,800yearold site, so we started a funding process about six months before our season begins. I work with the very kind permission of the egyptian government, and they have very, very strict rules and regulations around that process, and we have to tell them exactly where were going. But im very lucky, im very fortunate, i get to ive gotten to travel all over the world. Were wrapping up a project in peru, were about to go to i would ya. So i joke with people india. I joke with people i dream of doing projects in fiji in the middle of the winter. You will encounter no sympathy for getting away from alabama in the winter in chicago. [laughter] i figured i wouldnt. So talk a little bit about global explorer, right . This was the platform that you set up after the ted prize. Yeah. So one of the Big Questions we have in archaeology is, first, how many archaeological sites are out there left to find and also how do you think how can we create sort of a more equitable world for aspiration. And exploration. And right now to specialize the Remote Sensing to be able to access the data theres only maybe now a thousand, a couple hunker i dont know exactly hundred, i dont know exactly how many people specialize in exactly what i do. But i decided to set up global explorer which is a citizens platform that allows anyone in the world to look at satellite imagery and help find ancient sites because there are only so many of us, and most governments around the world dont have databases of archaeological sites. You can ask a biologist how many species of this kind of frog are there, 387, and theyll be able to tell you where they are. If you ask any archaeologist how many archaeological sites are around the world, not a single one would be able to answer that question, which is ridiculous because theyre mostly pretty big. The idea is you create a platform, and you allow everyone to work, and youre able to work much, much faster and more efficiently. Most of the time when im looking at imagery, im looking and looking and looking and not finding anything. So with global explorer, today i think weve had almost 90,000 users from 120 country, and theyve found over 20,000 archaeological features in peru, and about 700 of them have been determined by experts to be major sites. Thats amazing. So this is an example of something, have people herald the term heard the term Citizen Science before . I see some nods. Thats kind of the phrase for all of this exno ration of, you know exploration of what would otherwise be technically data that has been, generally speaking, historically inaccessible to people who dont have Technical Training whether its in archaeology or astronomy. So one of the things that we do at the adler is were part of the developers for something called universe. So this was a project that started at something called galaxy zoo back just about a decade or more now where there were these collections of galaxies, billions of stars in space, and people were interested in exploring them but, you know, its a big task to take all of these images and go through and tag them, label them as to what kind of galaxy they are. And so this Online Platforms universe started as a way of exploring those images much in the same way that youre describing with global explorer. And one of the things that i think has been really interesting about that, you know, nowadays the universe hosts, like, tons and tons of different stuff. I dont think we have archaeology specifically, but we have like, for example, a project called old weather where you look at ship logs and read that or snapshot serengeti where you look at animals and count the number of penguins in this image in addition to i work on a mission called kepler where we look for planets around other stars. And, you know, people who are not astronomers who dont, generally speaking, have the ability to write a program the way that i would if i was interacting with the data have done things like find new planets around other stars that werent discovered by people with professional astronomy training. And i think its really amazing to see this exploration really democratized in that way. Yeah, i think archaeology for some people is hard and that, first of all, it can be expensive to get to other places. It is an incredibly intense field, if you are not ablebodied and able to go out specifically, it can be really hard. And especially since having a child, i see were all naturally born explorers, and the big question when we launched is can we truly democratize archaeology. We didnt want to just create something just fun for kids. We wanted to create something that would work, that archaeologists could use that would generate important data andal allow people to do the science that i and my colleagues do. So design played a really Important Role in creating the platform before we Began Development we spent about six months speaking to people like the people behind universe and other Citizen Science platforms. We spent a lot of time talking to people of all ages and backgrounds about the types of things that they wanted to see in a platform like this. And weve had users as young as 4 and 5, and weve had kids as old as in their 90s and older. So the idea that weve developed something for everyone that people feel really connected to is really important to me. But also weve now, because were redeveloping the platform for a new launch which we hope will be some point early next year, weve gotten feedback from hundreds of people ant things they didnt about things they didnt like and things they did like and developing it and making a better experience for everyone. Have there been examples in your field of people calling stuff that the socalled experts have missed . So theres one instance, to me its kind of one of my favorite cases of global explorer. So our platform focused on an area of peru which is really famous for these things, some of you may have heard of [inaudible] say cred monkeys and birds and sake red monkeys and birds and butterflies that the people carved into the landscape. Its kind of debated as to what their purpose was. If we dont know what it is, we say it was for ritual purposes. [laughter] clearly very important and symbolic to the people. So our citizenscientists found many, many dozens of new potential sites in the region, and then we shared them with my dear friend Louis Costello whos just been named the minister the of culture in peru. Were very excited about that. He then took the data and went out and was doing drone mapping, and he as a side sort of result of hooping these new mapping these new sites ended up finding 15 new ones. Is so the idea that this data can be taken and given and help empower local archaeologists, to me, its just an extension of citizen archaeology. Ultimately, were giving the people on the ground in the places that know best the tools and resources that they might not otherwise have access to. Yeah, i think this is something that, you know, you mentioned in the beginning that were kind of seeing this moment in academia which i think is happening to some extent everywhere, a kind of leveling of the Playing Field of space being made for people who have been excluded traditionally from some of these practices. And its really been encouraging for me to see the emphasis on collaboration that exists in, i think, both of our fields where this myth of the lone genius that, you know, like, if you look at einstein or let me pick a fictional character, so doc brown from back to future. Thats often who people picture when they picture, you know, an astronomer, a scientist, and they also picture Indiana Jones, you know, when they think about archaeology. So i think its been really gratifying to me to see the way the teamwork is becoming more part of the narrative, because thats really actually how it is, you know . Even in any of these like, socalled famous lone geniuses that are from histo