David Weintraub

Professor of Astronomy; Director of Undergraduate Studies; Director of Program in Communication of Science & Technology Vanderbilt University

  • Nashville TN

Expert in astrophysics who also writes about extraterrestrial life, human space travel and space colonization.

Contact

Vanderbilt University

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Biography

Award-winning teacher and researcher at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee. Author of four books (Is Pluto a Planet?/2006; How Old is the Universe?/2010; Religions and Extraterrestrial Life: How Will We Deal With It?/2014; Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go/2018) and many dozens of professional papers.

Areas of Expertise

Space colonization
Extraterrestrial Life
Mars Colonization
Mars
Space Travel
Astrophysics
Ethics of space colonization

Accomplishments

Jeffrey Nordhaus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the College of Arts & Science, Vanderbilt University

2003

Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt University

1999-2000

Templeton Foundation Award in Science & Religion course competition

1998

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Education

University of California

Ph.D.

1989

University of California

M.S.

1982

Yale University

B.S.

1980

Selected Media Appearances

For atheists, the idea of aliens seems real. Religious people doubt it.

Religion News Service  online

2021-08-23

With no evidence of alien life in the universe, however, both sides are operating purely on belief, according to David Weintraub, professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt University. While scientists have discovered planets that appear to be Earth-like, there is no evidence, at least for now, that life exists there.

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How Would World Religions Respond To Extraterrestrial Life?

Newsy  online

2021-06-15

Theologians, philosophers and scientists have been having the faith vs. aliens conversation for centuries.

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Jupiter, Saturn merging in night sky, closest in centuries

AP News  online

2020-12-21

“What is most rare is a close conjunction that occurs in our nighttime sky,” said Vanderbilt University’s David Weintraub, an astronomy professor. “I think it’s fair to say that such an event typically may occur just once in any one person’s lifetime, and I think ‘once in my lifetime’ is a pretty good test of whether something merits being labeled as rare or special.”

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Selected Articles

Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go

Princeton University Press

David Weintraub

2018

The story of the search for life on Mars—and the moral issues confronting us as we prepare to send humans there Does life exist on Mars? The question has captivated humans for centuries, but today it has taken on new urgency. NASA plans to send astronauts to Mars orbit by the 2030s.

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High Resolution X-ray Spectroscopy and Star Formation: HETG Observations of the Pre-Main Sequence Stellar Cluster IC 348

American Astronomical Society

David Principe, David P Huenemoerder, Norbert Schulz, Joel H Kastner, David Weintraub, Thomas Preibisch

2018

We present Chandra High Energy Transmission Grating (HETG) observations of the ˜3 Myr old pre-main sequence (pre-MS) stellar cluster IC 348. With 400-500 cluster members at a distance of ˜300 pc, IC 348 is an ideal target to observe a large number of X-ray sources in a single pointing and is thus an extremely efficient use of Chandra-HETG.

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DM Ori: a young star occulted by a disturbance in its protoplanetary disk

The Astrophysical Journal

oseph E Rodriguez, Keivan G Stassun, Phillip Cargile, Benjamin J Shappee, Robert J Siverd, Joshua Pepper, Michael B Lund, Christopher S Kochanek, David James, Rudolf B Kuhn, Thomas G Beatty, B Scott Gaudi, David A Weintraub et al.

2016

In some planet formation theories, protoplanets grow gravitationally within a young star's protoplanetary disk, a signature of which may be a localized disturbance in the disk's radial and/or vertical structure. Using time-series photometric observations by the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope South project and the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae, combined with archival observations, we present the discovery of two extended dimming events of the young star, DM Ori.

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