Category Archives: Science

Across the Universe: Seeing the Light

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This entry is part 22 of 184 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in April, 2007; we ran it here again in May, 2015 The e-mail came from the Fordham student who’s been working in the lab with me this term. “Some of the physics students have asked me to pass this on to you: they don’t want to admit it, but they’re totally lost.” There’s only a couple of weeks left of my sabbatical year at Fordham. I had asked the physics department if I could teach the class on electricity and magnetism; when I learned this material myself as an undergraduate, it had changed my life. I wanted the opportunity to pass the joy on to some of the brightest kids I’ve ever taught. They are totally lost? That’s no surprise; when I was a student, at this point I was lost too. The mathematics of electromagnetic fields has mystified science undergraduates even before Maxwell first summarized them with his famous equations. And the … Continue reading →

Skyward: May 2019

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Trinity As the world prepared for war in 1939, a group of physicists was studying how to reproduce the behavior of a star on Earth: to split an atom, either quietly to provide a virtually unlimited source of power, or explosively to create a weapon of mass destruction. Worried that the Germans might develop an atomic bomb first, astrophysicist  Leo Szilard wrote a letter to President Roosevelt suggesting that the Americans should develop the bomb first. Thinking that the letter would have more impact if it were signed by the foremost scientist of that time, Szilard made two visits to Albert Einstein’s summer home in Cutchogue, on Long Island, New York. They persuaded him to sign the letter. Einstein’s letter had an immediate and powerful impact on Roosevelt. He immediately set in place the initial research that led to the start of the Manhattan project in June of 1942. Within three years, the first plutonium nuclear device was test detonated … Continue reading →

Georgios Papanikolaou: Google Doodle Scientist

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If you used Google today you certainly noticed today’s Google Doodle scientist—George Nicholas Papanicolaou (Georgios Nikolaou Papanikolaou), inventor of the Pap smear test that enabled the early discovery of cervical cancer and other diseases.  There are a few bits of information that suggests that Papanikolaou was a scientist of faith: He was buried from St. Sophia Orthodox church in Miami. The journal Experimental and Therapeutic Medicine has an interview with Dr. Neda Voutsa-Perdiki, who wrote a 2016 book in Greek whose title in translation is Dr George and Mache-Mary Papanicolaou – As I knew them (published by the Medical Council of Athens, Greece). Dr. Voutsa-Perdiki states that “The secret of his [Papanicolaou’s] scientific success was hard work, dedication, love of research, faith and the courage he gained from his wife and colleagues.”  Dr. Voutsa-Perdiki also states that “He [Papanicolaou] frequently referred to the Easter season, especially to the mystagogy of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and the byzantine melodies of the church. In Kyme, as a child, he used to sing at the church those days himself. For this reason, he used to spend his Easter holidays with his nephew Vaggelis Stamatiou and his family, who lived close to Dr Papanicolaou’s house in Douglaston.” An article in the Singapore … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: April 24, 1908

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This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. Today’s guestbook entry is from April 24, 1908, when Elis Strömgren made a visit. Next to his name, Svante Elis Strömgren (1870-1947) wrote, “Professor an der Universität, Kopenhagen” (Professor at the University of Copenhagen). He was a noteworthy astronomer who in 1907 became director of the Observatory of Copenhagen.  His area of interest was primarily celestial mechanics, and he computed orbits for several comets.  The asteroid (1422) Stromgrenia is named for him. What makes him particularly notable, however, is not his own contribution but that of his children. Bengt Strömgren (1908-1987) made several significant advances in astrophysics, including the measurement of elemental composition of stars: 70% hydrogen, 27% helium, and the remaining 3% everything else.  I will write more about him in a future post, as he also … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook: April 9 1907

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This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints.  This is the first post in a new series that will highlight some of these notable visitors. Today’s guestbook entry is from April 9, 1907.  On that day, H. A. Lorentz signed the book. Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928) was a Dutch physicist at the University of Leiden. In his inscription, he wrote “Hoogleeraar aan de Universiteit te Leiden” (Professor at the University of Leiden). He is notable for two significant contributions. (Well, he has a list of significant contributions and various things that bear his name, but two are most significant.) First, he developed a theory to explain the Zeeman effect; i.e. the splitting of spectral lines in the presence of a strong magnetic field.  The splitting is due to the effect of the magnetic field on … Continue reading →

Scoping Out the Rosette Nebula from Kentucky

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Many different astronomers and their work have been featured on this blog.  We’ve seen some of the research being produced by Vatican Observatory astronomers.  Brenda Frye of Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona was a regular contributor to the blog for quite a while.  Fernando Comerón has contributed a guest post about his work at the European Southern Observatory, where he gets to observe with some of the world’s largest telescopes.  Larry Lebofsky has recently written about observing with the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT) on Mt. Graham in Arizona.  But today I would like to give readers of The Catholic Astronomer a different perspective on doing astronomical research. Meet Chad Howard, a colleague of mine at Jefferson Community & Technical College (JCTC) here in Louisville, Kentucky.  He is doing work that I think will be of interest to readers of The Catholic Astronomer, and he is doing it for reasons that readers will also find cool.  Chad is … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: abbot Gregor J. Mendel O.S.A. (1822-1884), Father of Genetics

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This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

Back when I taught an introductory-level astronomy class at university, I would start the course with a short unit on what science is and on the relationship between faith and science. I would mention Gregor Mendel as an example of a religious scientist because anyone who has taken high school biology knows the name.  So then I would ask the class what they know about him. “Father of genetics,” one person would say. Another student would pipe in, “He was a monk!” A third would offer something about “<mumble, mumble> pea plants.” At this point, I would then ask, “Okay, so given what you know about him, what do you think his job (his daily work) at the monastery was?” Every time I taught this unit, and almost every time I have brought up this example with peers (there’s always someone who spoils the trend eventually), I got the response, “He was the gardener.” It makes a certain sort of sense.  … Continue reading →

Growing Suspect of Religion, not Science

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On the Vatican Observatory Faith and Science pages there is a really cool entry that readers of The Catholic Astronomer should take a look at.  The entry consists of an excerpt from the Tahāfut al-falāsifa, or The Incoherence of the Philosophers, of Abu Hāmid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tūsi al-Ghazālī.  (The excerpt is fully downloadable in PDF format.)  Al-Ghazālī, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of medieval Islam’s best-known religious intellectuals. Al-Ghazālī says that disputing matters of science on the basis of religious texts or ideology is a waste of time.  Moreover, he says the atheists love it when people of faith do such things, because, he says, “then the atheist’s path for refuting religion becomes easy”.  He says that once something is scientifically well-established (for example, the mechanism by which eclipses occur), then whoever inspects them and is convinced by their evidence, deriving for himself information about the extent, times of occurrence, and duration of these two kinds … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: The Exploding Centaur

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This entry is part 21 of 184 in the series Across the Universe

This column first appeared in The Tablet in April, 2006, and first published here in 2015. It was April Fool’s Day at the Vatican’s telescope in southeastern Arizona, and we’d had three nights of cloudy weather. This night looked promising, however. Bill Romanishin, our colleague at the University of Oklahoma, had given us a list of Kuiper Belt Objects to observe, orbiting out beyond Neptune. Included were some Centaurs, objects that some day might become comets plunging close to the Sun. At the telescope, I was with Steve Tegler from Northern Arizona University. Along with each object, we also observed bits of blank sky, so we could find and remove all the dust spots on the images; and fields of stars whose colours and brightnesses were already well known, so that we could calibrate our objects against these known standards. Around midnight, about halfway into a field of standard stars, Steve looked over his list again and remembered, “Oh, Bill wanted us … Continue reading →

Observing on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT)

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We had five nights awarded us for this observing run and were able to observe for less than four hours. It was foggy/icy, snowy, and finally just cloudy. On our fourth night, we were told to “go home” in the morning as several feet of snow was expected and they were going to close the road to all traffic. Here are two pictures of our time up at the telescope. The left picture is a view similar to one below, except for the snow and the cloud that obscures the Large Binocular Telescope in the background. The right picture was taken on the roof showing Gary Gray (maintenance manager) sweeping snow off the dome. So much for adding our most recent observing experiences to the original blog! Note: Nancy Lebofsky recently posted a blog: Adventures in EPO—Tucson Festival of Books. Most of the people who visited the Vatican Observatory Foundation tables are from Tucson and southern Arizona. Unfortunately, many do … Continue reading →

Black Hole Imaged with Coordinated Telescope Observations

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A black hole and its shadow have been captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). EHT is an international collaboration whose support in the U.S. includes the National Science Foundation. A black hole is an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that comes within a black hole’s “event horizon,” its point of no return, will be consumed, never to re-emerge, because of the black hole’s unimaginably strong gravity. By its very nature, a black hole cannot be seen, but the hot disk of material that encircles it shines bright. Against a bright backdrop, such as this disk, a black hole appears to cast a shadow. The stunning new image shows the shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 (M87), an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth. This black hole is 6.5 billion times the … Continue reading →

Religious Scientists: Fr. Angelo Secchi S.J. (1818-1878), Pioneer of Astrophysics

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This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church

(This is the first article in the column “Religious Scientists of the Catholic Church” which looks at the lives and contributions of prominent vowed religious scientists.) The year 2018 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Fr. Angelo Secchi SJ, and so there have already been several articles on Fr. Secchi in this blog.  An interested reader could review any of these articles: “Ghost of elements, spectres of the universe: Angelo Secchi SJ” by Michelle Francl, Aug 8, 2018. “Solar Prominences and a Prominent Jesuit Astronomer” by Robert Macke, Oct 23, 2018. “Happy Birthday to the Father of Astrophysics!” by Guy Consolmagno, June 28, 2018. And outside the blog, here’s another article I wrote about Secchi’s oceanographic studies: “Fr. Angelo Secchi, S.J. and the Voyage of the Immacolata Concezione” by Robert Macke, International Society of Limnology webpage For the YouTube generation, here is a video to watch: Why begin this series with a scientist for whom so much has already … Continue reading →