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Br. Bob Macke is Collaborating on NASA’s Lucy Mission

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Br. Bob Macke has become a collaborator on the science team for NASA’s Lucy mission Br. Bob Macke of the Vatican Observatory Foundation has recently become a non-funded participating scientist on NASA’s Lucy mission to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids. The Lucy mission will be the first spacecraft to visit Trojan asteroids, which are asteroids that orbit at the same distance as Jupiter at its L4 and L5 Lagrangian points (60 degrees ahead of and behind Jupiter). Lucy is scheduled to launch in October of 2021 – it will perform several Earth gravity-assists, taking 12 years to travel to seven different asteroids: including the Main Belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson (named after the person who discovered the Australopithecus skeleton named Lucy) and six Trojan asteroids – two of those a binary asteroid pair! The Lucy mission will visit more independent destinations than any other space mission in history. Many of the Trojan asteroids are different from the main-belt asteroids, and may have been … Continue reading →

Faith and Science In The Classroom: Class Five – Caring For The Environment And The Ecology That Is Us.

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One of the clearest areas of collaboration between faith and science is care for creation. In the Catholic tradition, care for creation has long been accepted as one of the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). Though matters of ecology usually spiral into politically driven emotionalism, the approach to care for creation found in CST is quite practical and common sense. For example, as I was out fishing with one of my parishioners, I was reminded of the need for clean water that not only provides for human needs, but builds up healthy ecosystems for the communities we live. As we enjoyed a successful day that included three “keepers” for dinner, I was reminded of a simple fisherman’s ethic that fits nicely with CST: If you want to catch and eat fish from a lake, don’t pollute the lake. The modern theology of ecology derives from three, historic events. On the positive side, the exploration of space and images … Continue reading →

The Gluttonous Consumer

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In a study led by Dr. Christian Wolf and reported in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, a black hole was just discovered that is consuming material at a record-breaking rate of one star every 2-3 days. Dr. Wolf and his team found this black hole by searching for objects in the sky that do not move. Hyper-achieving black holes are very small and point-like, so can often be initially confused with stars. Side-by-side, the distinguishing feature is that only the stars are near to us. The implication is that over a period of years or decades only the stars will move across the sky. But, once a distant object with an “active” black hole is found, what is going on there? Why is it shining so brightly? One can imagine an assembly line that carries stars along it one-by-one. Each time a star drops off of the conveyer belt “at the end of the line,” the star … Continue reading →

Hawking’s Last Article

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Professor Stephen Hawking wrote one final paper which is published posthumously. In this new paper, Hawking and collaborator Professor Thomas Hertog conclude that our Universe sprung from a larger state or “multiverse” that is not infinite. Let us understand what this is all about by stepping back about 13.7 billion years in time. In these early days there is various evidence that our young Universe experienced a rapid period of growth called “inflation.” A very short time later, the inflation stopped and calmed down into the more gentle mode of expansion plus acceleration we see in our Universe today. But what is the situation beyond our Universe, in the multiverse, and how does it behave? The prevailing idea is that inflation is a normal attribute in the multiverse, such that the multiverse is expanding all the time at exponential rates in state called “eternal” inflation. From time to time, a universe such as our own emerges, and potentially even an … Continue reading →

Faith and Science in the Classroom: Class Four – Can A Christian Believe In Evolution?

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One of the more inflammatory subjects in the United States in regard to faith and science is evolution. The mere mention of the topic can lead to a combative atmosphere with little hope for anything healthy emerging. What I find a bit surprising is the number of brother priests who think that evolution is somehow against Catholicism. Whether it be the Catechism of the Catholic Church when it says that “methodological research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with faith” (CCC 159), Pius XII stating that the material origins of our body evolving from preexisting matter is not against Scripture (Humani Generis 36),  St. John Paul II stating the evolution is more than a hypothesis (Message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences: On Evolution 4), or Benedict XVI stating that it is absurd to think that Biblical creation and evolution are at … Continue reading →

Across the Universe: Information and truth

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This entry is part 12 of 159 in the series Across the Universe

This column first ran in The Tablet in May 2017 The British fantasy writer Neil Gaiman tells the story of attending a gathering of great writers, scholars, and thinkers, and wondering if he really belonged in that group. Next to him, another attendee also named Neil voiced similar doubts. “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.” To which Gaiman replied, “Yes. But you were the first man on the Moon. I think that counts for something.”   In that spirit, in May 2017 I presented to Pope Francis the attendees of our workshop on Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Space-time Singularities. The scientists included 35 of the brightest in the field, including a Nobel laureate. Two of them gave the Pope a copy of their work announcing the discovery of gravitational waves. (I gave the Pope a book written by … Continue reading →

Monsters in the Closet?

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Black holes are hard to point to because they are…black. Nevertheless, we did find out that there is a supermassive black hole at the Milky Way’s center. It has a mass that is greater than that of the Sun by factors of tens of millions. We arrived at this conclusion by watching what individual stars do that are very near to the Galactic center. These ill-fated stars describe oval-shaped orbits as if they are waltzing about some invisible central object. Recent studies using sophisticated computer simulations are showing that about ten supermassive black holes should be lurking somewhere in galaxies the size of the Milky Way. Only one of these monsters would be situated at the very center (the one we found), while the others would orbit the galaxy at distances that are large compared to the Sun’s distance from the Galactic center (whew), and far above or below the Galactic plane. Fortunately, we are situated exactly in the plane … Continue reading →

Faith and Science in the Classroom: Class Three – The Limits Of Science And The Exploration Of Truth

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In my previous posts on Science in the Classroom, I’ve presented resources to you on the themes of Awe and Wonder and the question, What does it means to be human? In both sets of resources, what begins to emerge is that a powerful bridge between faith and science is found when the measurable and quantifiable aspects of creation begin to point to a beauty and elegance that sparks a sense of wonder, evoking an organic ethical vision of protecting the dignity of the human person and all of creation. This relationship between “a world of measurements” and “a world of wonder and dignity” reminds me of St. Bonaventure’s classic work, The Mind’s Journey to God. Click here to view a video I did for the Vatican Observatory Foundation, explaining this distinction in the thought of St. Bonaventure. What begins to emerge from the writings of St. Bonaventure is the idea that faith and science explore fundamentally different types of questions, … Continue reading →

Faith and Science in the Classroom: Class Two – What Is Life And What Does It Mean To Be Alive?

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When I was in seminary, one of my professors, Dr. David Fagerberg, explained that you can understand the Sacraments in one of two ways. The first way is to ask, What is it? This is an approach that is analogous to a frog dissection project, looking at definitions that address matter, form, substance, and presence. The second way is to ask, How are the Sacraments effective in our lives? This question explores themes like – What does it mean to say that Baptism removes all sin, personal and Original Sin? What does it mean when Jesus says unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you do not have life within you? What does it mean to say that Viaticum prepares the soul with the Anointing of the Sick and the final reception of the Eucharist to take life’s ultimate journey from this life to eternity? An insight I gained was that we need to ask both type of questions … Continue reading →

GAIA Opens Our Eyes to the Galaxy

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There is a release of new astronomical data by the European Space Agency satellite called “Gaia.” The main purpose of GAIA is to report accurate distances to stars in the Milky Way. GAIA does this by measuring parallaxes. This method relies on measuring what we might colloquially call “perspective.” The idea is that a high precision snapshot of a nearby star will make a pattern on the sky with respect to its fixed stellar neighbors. If you then wait for six months and take another snapshot image of that same nearby star, you will see a slightly different pattern. The Difference between the two images is called parallax. Physically, what happens is that view of a nearby star against the background of fixed stars change when the Earth is one one side of its orbit compared to when the Earth is on the other side of its orbit. Similar an artist will paint a completely different picture of the same … Continue reading →

What’s in a Galaxy?

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The working definition of a galaxy is a huge collection of stars whose motions we do not understand. It was therefore a surprise when a galaxy was recently discovered whose motions we do understand. This new type of galaxy is called an Ultra Diffuse Galaxy (UDG). Astronomers usually ascertain the mass of a galaxy by observing the speeds of the stars and star clusters that orbit it. There is a straightforward formula which relates the speed of the stars with the mass of the galaxy. The Sun and the Earth, for example, move at a speed of 475,000 miles per hour about the center of the Milky Way. From this fact we work out that the mass of the Galaxy is about 300 billion times the mass of the Sun. But what is this mass anyway? Well, embarrassingly we cannot even see the majority of the mass in the Milky Way. Put another way, there is some form of material, … Continue reading →

Faith and Science in the Classroom: Class One – Awe and Wonder and Pastoral Applications

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In the weeks to come, I will offer brief reflections on two projects to bring science into the seminary classroom. Seminary, for those who do not know, is the name given to the school that future priests attend. The name “seminary” means “a seedbed.” Therefore, a seminary is not only a school of academics, but it is an environment of formation in which the soil of our hearts is tilled to receive the seeds of faith. As I have written about in the past, one of the deficiencies I experienced in my seminary education was instruction on questions of faith and science. Whether it be writing for The Catholic Astronomer, participating in wonderful experiences like the Faith and Astronomy Workshop, or being a guest on Slooh, God has allowed me to embark on a unique “independent study” that has borne a great deal of fruit to help address this deficiency. Recently, I was honored to meet Jennifer Wiseman, Director of … Continue reading →