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Jennifer Wiseman interview

Interview with Jennifer Wiseman, Part 2

Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer who studies star forming regions of our galaxy using optical, radio, and infrared telescopes. Her career has involved oversight of national astronomical facilities as well as public science policy and discourse. In 1987 she co-discovered the periodic comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff as an undergraduate researcher at MIT. She has a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In Part 1 of her interview with ESN, she shared some of the latest astronomical findings. In Part 2 she shares how science shapes her personal life of faith.

ESN: Are there areas of your research that move you to worship?

“Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image Reveals Galaxies Galore” from Hubblesite.org.

JW: I am fascinated by galaxies. The Hubble space telescope produced a marvelous image called the ultra deep field, which is the result of staring out into space for several days and collecting light so that it could image the faintest objects, thereby seeing a whole collection of galaxies. When you look at this image and you realize it’s only a tiny fraction of one area of the sky, and then extrapolate in your mind around the whole sky, you get a visceral sense of how enormous the universe is. And when you imagine that each galaxy, each speck of light contains potentially hundreds of billions of stars, and there are potentially planetary systems around most of those stars, it is awesome to contemplate. I find both the magnitude of the universe I sense by looking at images of these galaxies, and also the beauty of these galaxies, to be one of the most spirit-gripping parts of astronomy that I’ve ever seen.

So then for me, if I think about these things through the lens of faith, because I am someone who believes God is responsible for the universe and the natural processes we study in science, I have to realize God has been upholding and watching over and supporting an evolving universe over billions of years, long before life and human life existed on this planet. What does that mean? One way people react to this is by feeling a great sense of insignificance, since we occupy such a small fraction of time and space. My reaction is not that, but a sense of almost fearful gratefulness that this whole universe has been allowed to mature over eons of time to the point where planets, at least one, can support abundant life, and that I get to be a part of that for just a little while. So I’m grateful. And it also makes me a little fearful: am I using my time well? [Read more…] about Interview with Jennifer Wiseman, Part 2

Interview with Jennifer Wiseman, Part 1

Jennifer Wiseman, Ph.D., an astronomer who studies star forming regions of our galaxy using optical, radio, and infrared telescopes.

Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer who studies star forming regions of our galaxy using optical, radio, and infrared telescopes. Her career has involved oversight of national astronomical facilities as well as public science policy and discourse. In 1987 she co-discovered the periodic comet 114P/Wiseman-Skiff as an undergraduate researcher at MIT. She has a bachelor’s degree in physics from MIT, and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. In Part 1 of this interview with ESN, she shares some of the latest astronomical findings. In Part 2 she will share how science shapes her personal life of faith.

ESN: What are the most exciting frontiers of discovery right now in your field?
JW: Well, the two hottest topics right now in astronomy are 1) the detection of planets outside our solar system (we call them exoplanets), and 2) Dark energy—which is this mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.

ESN: What’s currently happening with the discovery of Exoplanets?
JW: In the exoplanet field the technology has improved so much in the last few years, that we’ve gone from not even knowing whether there are planets outside our solar system to now having confirmed nearly 1,000 of these exoplanet systems and almost 3,000 potential candidate systems that need more study. Most of these planets have been detected through indirect means because it’s hard to take an image of a tiny planet next to a very bright star; it gets lost in the glare. Instead, astronomers have developed techniques to detect planets around stars by looking at the effects the planets have on the star. So if a planet is orbiting in front of its parent star along our line of sight, we may not be able to see the planet itself, but we can see the total amount of starlight dipping periodically with every orbit as the planet blocks our view of part of the star. That tells us a lot about the size of that planet and about its distance from the star, and it tells us about the planet’s temperature and even its density. Through this method the Kepler space telescope has detected almost 3,000 systems that are potentially planetary systems. Another way planets are found is by noticing the mutual gravitational pull between the planet and its parent star that causes the star to appear to wobble with every orbit. So measuring the wobble of stars is another way of detecting planets. [Read more…] about Interview with Jennifer Wiseman, Part 1