Imagining Other Worlds

Alien worlds are no longer purely the realm of science fiction. Since the discovery of the first planet orbiting another star in 1992, planet-hunting scientists have been uncovering more and more about the worlds beyond our solar system.

Megan Bedell, an astronomer at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute, develops tools to discover and characterize planets in far-off solar systems. Over just the last few years, hundreds and hundreds of these exoplanets have been discovered. Sophisticated tools are revealing the bewildering array of attributes the worlds can display: Earth-like planets, tempestuous hot Jupiters and even real-life “Tattooines” with two suns.

Ari Melenciano is the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution that recently created an experimental art book titled “Black Metal.” The book features an anthology of a new world exploring interpersonal and cosmic experience in tandem. Presented in the form of a training manual, the book follows its subjects on interstellar journeys through space as they look for peace, realignment and their true selves.

Join us as Bedell and Melenciano sit down with Quanta Magazine Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel to explore the intersection of cutting-edge science and the frontiers of imagination. The conversation will explore how real fantastical worlds can fuel creativity and imagination, and what art and the creation of speculative worlds can do for our understanding of deep space, astrophysics and even the nature of reality itself.

Megan Bedell is an associate research scientist at the Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute. She works on high-precision spectroscopic measurements of exoplanetary systems and sunlike stars throughout the galaxy with a particular focus on the connections between stars and the planets they host. She joined the foundation as a Flatiron research fellow in 2017 after earning her Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Chicago.

Ari Melenciano has cultivated an expansive practice within the arts, technology, design, culture and pedagogy. Her natural ability to combine many disciplines reveals their interconnectedness and reimagines their conventions for new possibilities. Her art practice ranges from using AI through both critical and imaginative lenses, to sound design using botanical data. Her work has been exhibited around the world, from Dubai’s Museum of the Future to Studio Museum in Harlem. She’s a frequent international public speaker and occasionally designs and teaches courses at New York University, Hunter College, the Parsons School of Design and the Pratt Institute. She’s the founder of Afrotectopia, a social institution that imagines new possibilities at the nexus of art, design, technology, activism and culture. Afrotectopia has taken many forms, including festivals, think tanks, a summer camp, adult continued education programming, an international residency, and an incubator. Previously, she was a creative technologist at Google’s Creative Lab.