A Different View of the Universe

Larrell Newton (left) and Marta Bonilla from the Jackson/Mann School look over a list of research questions written by students under the guidance of Professor Alyssa Goodman.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Yeilanise Noriega, a sixth-grader at Jackson/Mann K-8 School, recently experienced a course that changed her world perspective exponentially — so much so that she is now convinced life exists on other planets.

"I didn't think so before, but I do now believe there is life elsewhere," she said. "There are billions and billions of planets and stars out there, and we can’t be the only planet that has life."

Noriega's change of heart is a result of a pioneer program between Harvard and Boston Public Schools through the WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors Program (WWTA), a team of astronomers and educators at Harvard University. Noriega said that the program changed her perspective on science, which she used to think was “boring” — but not anymore.

"Now, each day, I just want to learn more," she said. "We need to have more people studying science. The more people are interested in science, the better our chances of learning more and making more discoveries."

Noriega was just one of 40 sixth- and seventh-grade students who participated in the pilot program at Jackson/Mann. The program, which is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, helped students explore the WorldWide Telescope, a free, open-source "universe information system" that provides 3-D data and views of the universe from thousands of different sources.

Using the telescope, the students created their own "tours" of the universe, exploring questions they generated themselves. They met at the Harvard Ed Portal in the last week of June to share their final projects, meet Harvard faculty members in the Astronomy Department, and receive certificates.

Alyssa Goodman, Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard University and research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, is the principal investigator for the WWTA program. Now in its sixth year, she said the program brings Harvard experts in astronomy and physics into a variety of educational settings.

"We wanted to incorporate WWTA into a program where middle-school kids could think about the odds of life elsewhere in the universe," Goodman said. "The astronomy part of that is only a piece: It has to do with how human biology and life science works, too."