I'm Nicholeen Viall. I work at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and I study the Sun.
In one way or another, the Sun affects pretty much everything going on here on Earth.
There wouldn't even be life here on Earth without the Sun.
One big example of how the Sun affects the Earth is space weather. One of the cool effects of
space weather is the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.
I've always been interested in astronomy and studying the stars and the Sun and the solar system.
When I was in eighth grade, I had one of those "what do I want to be when I grew up" writing assignments
in my English class. And so I wrote about wanting to be an astrophysicist,
but at the time, I didn't even know that that was what it was called.
And I came home, and I was talking to my parents about that I wanted to study the stars and
galaxies and planets, and how they're formed, and what they're made of. And my Dad said,
"Well, that's called being an astrophysicist, and you need to go get your Ph.D. in physics."
And so I did. Through grad school, I danced at ballet. I felt like it was a good way to access the creative
part of my brain. It turns out there's a lot of creativity that's needed in science
because you're exploring space and questions that nobody has really thought through before.
And so you kind of have to use your imagination to think of all the different possibilities.
That's how we refine our ideas about how the universe works.
And I think that's just so cool. I just think it's so, so cool.
(music playing)