How Mesopotamian Sheep Entrails, Stars forming in the Milky Way, and Climate Change are Related

How Mesopotamian Sheep Entrails, Stars forming in the Milky Way, and Climate Change are RelatedPresentation Date: Friday, December 12, 2025Location: Presented virtually for NVIDIA Research Radar Talks.Abstract: This talk will offer a quick overview of how my combined interests in art, physics, and history have led to a research agenda that spans astrophysics, exploratory data analysis, the history of prediction, climate change, science education, and AI. Astrophysics—and my own work on the nature of star-forming regions in galaxies—relies heavily on large datasets and detailed computer simulations. I now lead MilkyWay3D.org, which seeks to gather and analyze all that astronomers know about the 3D structure of our Galaxy. Humans are still (much) better than AI at exploring data visually, so I co-lead the Linkable Interactive Visualization and Exploration (LIVE, LIVE-env.org) Environments effort to combine the world’s best data-visualization tools with popular online frameworks and AI. MilkyWay3D serves as a demonstration project for the astronomically-relevant tools within LIVE, alongside parallel efforts in Biology/Genomics and GIS/Climate Science—the other two domains where LIVE is being built out.Thanks to an early, accidental immersion in global-warming research as a college intern, plus my appreciation for the importance of computer simulation, plus my longstanding goal of improving public understanding of science, and the founding of edX, I was able to create what is now The Prediction Project (PredictionX.org) at Harvard. In short, the project provides online resources across many platforms that trace the history of how humans have predicted their futures—from Ancient Mesopotamian divination using sheep entrails to modern weather and climate forecasting, including NVIDIA’s Earth-2 initiative. PredictionX resources now feature the work of about 50 experts worldwide, including faculty from Harvard, Oxford, and Cambridge, and I teach a Harvard course based on them called “Prediction: The Past and Present of the Future.”Finally, I’ll describe how these interests connect to the NASA-supported CosmicDS project, which uses astronomy and Earth science examples to teach data science—and AI—to high school and college learners.Files included are Keynote slides (in .key and .pdf formats) and Apple Movie (.m4v)