Daily Archives: January 10, 2024

XRISMs Resolve instrument captured data from supernova remnant N132D in the Large Magellanic Cloud to create the most detailed X-ray spectrum of the object ever made. The spectrum reveals peaks associated with silicon, sulfur, argon, calcium, and iron. Inset at right is an image of N132D captured by XRISMs Xtend instrument. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Resolve and Xtend

XRISM, a collaborative mission between Japan, NASA, and ESA, is set to revolutionize X-ray astronomy with its advanced instruments, offering unprecedented insights into the universes hottest and most massive structures.

The Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory has released a first look at the unprecedented data it will collect when science operations begin later this year.

The satellites science team released a snapshot of a cluster of hundreds of galaxies and a spectrum of stellar wreckage in a neighboring galaxy, which gives scientists a detailed look at its chemical makeup.

XRISM will provide the international science community with a new glimpse of the hidden X-ray sky, said Richard Kelley, the U.S. principal investigator for XRISM at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Well not only see X-ray images of these sources, but also study their compositions, motions, and physical states.

XRISM (pronounced crism) is led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in collaboration with NASA, along with contributions from ESA (European Space Agency). It launched on September 6, 2023.

Supernova remnant N132D lies in the central portion of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy about 160,000 light-years away. XRISMs Xtend captured the remnant in X-rays, displayed in the inset. At its widest, N132D is about 75 light-years across. Although bright in X-rays, the stellar wreckage is almost invisible in the ground-based background view taken in optical light. Credit: Inset, JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, C. Smith, S. Points, the MCELS Team and NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Its designed to detect X-rays with energies up to 12,000 electron volts and will study the universes hottest regions, largest structures, and objects with the strongest gravity. For comparison, the energy of visible light is 2 to 3 electron volts.

The mission has two instruments, Resolve and Xtend, each at the focus of an X-ray Mirror Assembly designed and built at Goddard.

Resolve is a microcalorimeter spectrometer developed by NASA and JAXA. It operates at just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero inside a refrigerator-sized container of liquid helium.

When an X-ray hits Resolves 6-by-6-pixel detector, it warms the device by an amount related to its energy. By measuring each individual X-rays energy, the instrument provides information previously unavailable about the source.

XRISMs Xtend imager collected this snapshot of supernova remnant N132D. The expanding wreckage is estimated to be about 3,000 years old and was created when a star roughly 15 times the Suns mass ran out of fuel, collapsed, and exploded. At its widest, N132D is about 75 light-years across. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend

The mission team used Resolve to study N132D, a supernova remnant and one of the brightest X-ray sources in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy around 160,000 light-years away in the southern constellation Dorado. The expanding wreckage is estimated to be about 3,000 years old and was created when a star roughly 15 times the Suns mass ran out of fuel, collapsed, and exploded.

The Resolve spectrum shows peaks associated with silicon, sulfur, calcium, argon, and iron. This is the most detailed X-ray spectrum of the object ever obtained and demonstrates the incredible science the mission will do when regular operations begin later in 2024.

These elements were forged in the original star and then blasted away when it exploded as a supernova, said Brian Williams, NASAs XRISM project scientist at Goddard. Resolve will allow us to see the shapes of these lines in a way never possible before, letting us determine not only the abundances of the various elements present, but also their temperatures, densities, and directions of motion at unprecedented levels of precision. From there, we can piece together information about the original star and the explosion.

XRISMs Xtend instrument captured galaxy cluster Abell 2319 in X-rays, shown here in purple and outlined by a white border representing the extent of the detector. The background is a ground-based image showing the area in visible light. Credit: JAXA/NASA/XRISM Xtend; background, DSS

XRISMs second instrument, Xtend, is an X-ray imager developed by JAXA. It gives XRISM a large field of view, allowing it to observe an area about 60% larger than the average apparent size of the full moon.

Xtend captured an X-ray image of Abell 2319, a rich galaxy cluster about 770 million light-years away in the northern constellation Cygnus. Its the fifth brightest X-ray cluster in the sky and is currently undergoing a major merger event.

The cluster is 3 million light-years across and highlights Xtends wide field of view.

This composite image shows supernova remnant N132D. It uses data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple and green) and Hubble Space Telescope (red). N132D is among the brightest X-ray remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby dwarf galaxy. Credit: NASA/STScI/CXC/SAO, processing by Judy Schmidt, CC BY-NC-SA

Even before the end of the commissioning process, Resolve is already exceeding our expectations, said Lillian Reichenthal, NASAs XRISM project manager at Goddard. Our goal was to achieve a spectral resolution of 7 electron volts with the instrument, but now that its in orbit, were achieving 5. What that means is well get even more detailed chemical maps with each spectrum XRISM captures.

Resolve is performing exceptionally and already conducting exciting science despite an issue with the aperture door covering its detector. The door, designed to protect the detector before launch, has not opened as planned after several attempts. The door blocks lower-energy X-rays, effectively cutting the mission off at 1,700 electron volts compared to the planned 300. The XRISM team will continue to explore the anomaly and is investigating different approaches to opening the door. The Xtend instrument is unaffected.

NASAs XRISM General Observer Facility, hosted at Goddard, is accepting proposals for observations from members of U.S. and Canadian institutions through Thursday, April 4. Cycle 1 of XRISM General Observer investigations will begin in the summer of 2024.

XRISM is a collaborative mission between JAXA and NASA, with participation by ESA. NASAs contribution includes science participation from the Canadian Space Agency.

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XRISM Unveils the Invisible: A New Era in X-Ray Astronomy - SciTechDaily

The world of astronomy has already offered a pretty fascinating start to 2024. In just the first five days of the year, we've seen incredible discoveries like the true colors of Neptune and Uranus as well as a massive cyclone raging on a distant exoplanet thanks to the trusty Hubble Space Telescope. But things are only going to ramp up over the next week. By a lot.

From Jan. 7 to Jan. 11, the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society will convene in the vibrant city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Thousands of scientists specializing in an absolutely incredible array of subjects ranging from dark matter mysteries to star explosions and the search for habitable exoplanets to the technology required to propel spacecraft across the solar system will gather in one area. They'll get ready to announce some of the best and brightest studies they've been working on; meanwhile, they'll be figuring out how to get even bigger and brighter with their next by listening to wild ideas, strange contradictions and telescopic achievements their colleagues will lay out. Some have even called this event the "Super Bowl of Astronomy."

Related: The Magellanic Clouds must be renamed, astronomers say

NASA will be there too, to offer updates on major missions like the trailblazing, $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming, highly anticipated, Habitable Worlds Observatory. According to a statement released on Jan. 5, NASA will also be discussing the 2024 total solar eclipse, which will take place on April 8, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope currently under construction and even its scientific balloon program.

"Experts will discuss new research from NASA missions at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) on topics ranging from planets outside our solar system to fleeting, high-energy explosions in the universe," the agency said in the statement.

All NASA press conferences will be streamed for the public to view on AAS's Press Office YouTube channel; other conferences during the meeting will be found there as well. After the meeting concludes, the streams will be available to view on an online archive provided by the organization. You'll notice that this archive includes a wealth of presentations from previous years as well.

Beyond NASA, teams from other iconic space facilities, current and upcoming, are scheduled to speak, too. Members of the Rubin Observatory, for instance, are expected to let everyone know how things are going with their efforts to discover tens of billions of galaxies once its construction is complete in Chile. But, as we'd mentioned, perhaps the most interesting and hopefully mind-blowing presentations will be coming from researchers speaking during the event.

Though we don't have a ton of information yet on each of those talks, we're able to see some of the study headlines. And they look quite intriguing. For instance, Jan. 8 is poised to bring us an update on a "dark galaxy," the origins of "odd radio circles," and a "famous exploded star in its best light." Jan. 9 appears to have information concerning an exoplanet's tail-like escaping atmosphere and a highly distant fast radio burst seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Jan. 10 has something about a "supernova imposter" on its schedule and Jan. 11 beholds an entire category of presentation dubbed "Oddities in the Sky." This honestly barely scratches the surface. You can have a look at the full list of presentations here.

Briefings are scheduled to begin between (and including) Jan. 8 to Jan. 11 at 10:15 a.m. CST (11:15 a.m. EST) and then again at 2:15 p.m. CST (3:15 p.m. EST). During the week, you can follow along with Space.com as we bring you some of the AAS's 243rd meeting highlights.

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The 'Super Bowl of Astronomy' begins next week in New Orleans - Space.com

Oops! Scientific American did it again, this time with an op-ed that could have been ripped from the pages of The Onion. As is so common these days, the piece proposes that we change the language of science (astronomy in this case), since some of its terms are bad in four ways:

a. They are violent, sexist, and triggering

b. They are not beautiful and elegant like astronomy is, but grating; and they are not kind

c. They are non-inclusive, presumably helping keep minorities out of astronomy.

d. They are untruthful and distort astronomy

In my view, none of these claims holds up, for the article is all Pecksniffian assertion with not a shred of evidence. Author Juan Madrid assumes the role of a bomb-sniffing dog, snuffling the field of astronomy for linguistic mines.

Click the headline below to read and weep, or find the piece archived here. The author is identified this way (my link):

Juan P. Madridis an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

The piece begins by describing a collision that will take place, 4 to 7 billion years hence, between the Milky Way and its closest galaxy, Andromeda. Immediately the word collision is seen as triggering. One of Madrids students described the future collision instead as a giant galactic hug. But the person who sent me this link added this comment:

My wife says that if Andromeda doesnt want the Milky Way to hug her then its interstellar sexual assault.

Indeed! But Madrid hastens to instruct us why using collision is not only grating, but misleading:

The kindness, but also the accuracy, of the language my student used was in sharp contrast to the standard description we use in astronomy to explain the final destiny of Andromeda and the Milky Way: a collision. But as astronomers have predicted, when Andromeda and the Milky Way finally meet, their stars will entwine and create a larger cosmic structure, a process that is more creating than destroying, which is what we envision when we use the termcollision. A galactic hug is scientifically truthful, and its led me to believe that astronomers should reconsider the language we use.

First of all collision doesnt mean destroying, but simply two objects hitting each other. In this case, two galaxies collide, but their stars are spread so far apart that theyll simply merge into one big galaxy and star will not hit star. You could say merge instead of collide, but that also implies that perhaps the stars will absorb each other. If you want to convey the idea that nothing gets banged up, then, Madrid suggests using galactic hug. He actually wants astronomers, their classes, and their textbooks, to adopt this new, kind, and romantic term. (There are, of course, more salacious terms that could be used.) But they wont be because they sound dumb, and in fact galactic hug is just as inaccurate as the other terms, for hug implies that there is some mutual enfolding, when in fact, the entities merge and do not remain separate, as humans do when they have a (temporary) hug. When Fred and Sue hug each other, they dont merge into one person. . .

And so Madrid, combing the literature for other terms that are jarring and, he says, misleading, finds more, as of course he would. (You can do this in any field of biology, chemistry. or physics; all you need is a sufficiently diligent Pecksniff). Ive singled out Madrids instances of bad language below by adding my own links, and putting those words in bold.

For instance, in galaxy evolution we invoke imagery strikingly similar to what you would expect if you were eavesdropping on Hannibal Lecter: words like cannibalism, harassment [JAC: no instance found], starvation, strangulation, strippingorsuffocation. There is a rather long list of foul analogies that have entered, and are now entrenched, in the lexicon of professional astronomy. We have grown accustomed to this violent language and as a community, weseldom questionor reflect on its use.

Strangulationis a particularly cringeworthy term in astronomy, referring to the decline of the number of stars born in some types of galaxies. This is a vicious crime where most often thevictim is a woman; the perpetrator, a man. Yet, we use this word mindlessly to describe a slow astronomical process that takes millions of years. Under certain conditions, some galaxies use up or lose the gas that is the primordial ingredient to form stars. When that happens, galaxies make new stars at a lower rate. But these galaxies do not die or suffer great harm. They will continue to shine and will live their natural evolution.

This is but one of many examples of violent language in our field that actually describes something gradual, slow and perhaps even gentle.

Madrid was savvy enough to impute misogyny to one of these terms: strangulation, giving some woke heft to his thesis. But if you look at how the terms are used, only someone who wants to be offended would be. Moreover, they are not inaccurate. Starvation, for example, refers to something that cuts off the flow of gas that galaxies need for new star formation. I dont find it inaccurate at all. In fact, none of these terms are inaccuratewhat Madrid really objects to is that they are triggering and unwelcoming. He tries to sell his campaign to deep-six these terms as being untruthful, because he doesnt want to look like an ideologue, but Im not buying it. Also he allows explosion for the creation of a supernova, in most cases he finds this language needlessly vicious and [promoting] inaccurate connotations.

In short, Madrid finds this language triggering, for thats the only explanation for why we should avoid this kind of vicious language. And, as he says below,

The use of hypercharged words in our field ignores the fact that this violent imagery can trigger distress in colleagues who might have been victims of violence.

But there are two points to be made here. First, as I noted in a recent post, giving the relevant studies, Trigger warnings dont work and can even causemore trauma. There is no evidence that using this sort of language somehow harms the students. In fact, the remedy for those who are traumatized by certain words is not to avoid exposure to them, but to learn to not be upset when you are exposed. There is therapy for this.

Second, as is so often the case in these screeds, Madrid gives no examples of how the bad language upsets people. He should be able to produce at least a dozen cases on the spot, like Jane got upset and left the class when she heard the word strangulation', or Bob reported Professor Basement Cat to the university for using the term cannibalism on the astronomy exam, which, he said, made him think of the Donner Party and prevented him from completing the exam. In nearly all of these language-policing articles, there is a surfeit of outrage and a dearth of examples or evidence of harm.

But Madrid circumvents the lack of evidence and simply suggests ways that we can censor this language, again pretending hes interested mainly in scientific truth:

To shift toward more welcoming and truthful language in astronomy, scientific journals can push to change the currently accepted language. The referee, or the scientific editor, can ask the authors to consider more appropriate descriptions of the physical processes involved. Referees, editors and editorial boards can step up to enforce scientific accuracy and stop the use of violent, misogynistic language that is now pervasive. This is a call for scientific precision. The use of hypercharged words in our field ignores the fact that this violent imagery can trigger distress in colleagues who might have been victims of violence.

Can, could have, might have. Where are the examples of this? The sweating professor gives none. And isnt it amazing that the more accurate language is always the kinder language?

And, as expected, Madrid manages to drag race, inclusion, and diversity into his discussion, even though none of the terms above have anything to do with race. And this belies his faux concern mainly for scientific accuracy:

As astronomers, we must strive to create a more inclusive and diverse community that reflects the composition of our society.Valuable effortsto provide opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in astronomy have been created. However,by many metrics, the progress made towards gender equality and true diversity has beenpainfully slow.

We must listen to the new generation of astronomers. My student showed me that while some astronomical processes can be intense, the universe revealed through astronomy provides us with the most fascinating sights known to humankind. Like many other young scientists, she thinks that when we explain astronomical phenomena with wording and phrases that share our excitement and appreciation, it also encourages others to join in and wonder what else we can discover together.

The universe is beautiful, elegant and ever-changing. Astronomy would be wise to follow its lead.

And so, in the end, we see that this kind of misguided effort, concentrating on words rather than science itself, is part of the corruption that has entered science via DEI and its ideology. What we have is one more attempt to control thought by controlling language.

There is no evidence that minorities and women are being kept out of astronomy because they dont find its language inclusive,, though thats really the thesis of Madrids piece. But the very idea that this thesis is true is laughable. Promoting the idea that galaxies hug each other is not going to bring people pouring into astronomy.

Once again Scientific American, trying to ride the woke bandwagon, has fallen off the train. Blame not only the author, but the editor, who actually approved this nonsense.

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Scientific American proposes policing the language of astronomy to make it beautiful and elegant, as well as ... - Why Evolution Is True

In summer 2022, astronomers detected the most powerful fast radio burst (FRB) ever observed. And coming from a location that dates halfway back to the Big Bang, it also was the farthest known FRB spotted to date.

Now, astronomers led by Northwestern University have pinpointed the extraordinary objects birthplace and its rather curious, indeed.

Using images from NASAs Hubble Space Telescope, the researchers traced the FRB back to not one galaxy but a group of at least seven galaxies. The galaxies in the collection appear to be interacting with one another perhaps even on the path to a potential merger. Such groups of galaxies are rare and possibly led to conditions that triggered the FRB.

The unexpected finding might challenge scientific models of how FRBs are produced and what produces them.

Without the Hubbles imaging, it would still remain a mystery as to whether this FRB originated from one monolithic galaxy or from some type of interacting system, said Northwesterns Alexa Gordon, who led the study. Its these types of environments these weird ones that drive us toward a better understanding of the mystery of FRBs.

Gordon will present this research during the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana. Revealing the Environment of the Most Distant Fast Radio Burst with the Hubble Space Telescope will take place at 2:15 p.m. CST on Tuesday (Jan. 9) as a part of a session on High-Energy Phenomena and Their Origins. Reporters can register here.

Gordon is a graduate student in astronomy at Northwesterns Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, where she is advised by study co-author Wen-fai Fong, an associate professor of physics and astronomy. Fong and Gordon also are members of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA).

Flaring up and disappearing within milliseconds, FRBs are brief, powerful radio blasts that generate more energy in one quick burst than our sun emits in an entire year. And the record-breaking FRB (dubbed FRB 20220610A) was even more extreme than its predecessors.

Not only was it four times more energetic than closer FRBs, it also clocked in as the most distant FRB yet discovered. When FRB 20220610A originated, the universe was just 5 billion years old. (For comparison, the universe is now 13.8 billion years old.)

In early observations, the burst appeared to have originated near an unidentifiable, amorphous blob, which astronomers initially thought was either a single, irregular galaxy or a group of three distant galaxies. But, in a new twist, the Hubbles sharp images now suggest the blob might be as least as many as seven galaxies in incredibly close proximity to one another. In fact, the galaxies are so close to one another that they could all fit inside our own Milky Way.

There are some signs that the group members are interacting, Fong said. In other words, they could be trading materials or possibly on a path to merging. These groups of galaxies (called compact groups) are incredibly rare environments in the universe and are the densest galaxy-scale structures we know of.

This interaction could trigger bursts of star formation, Gordon said. That might indicate that the progenitor of FRB 20220610A is associated with a fairly recent population of stars which matches what weve learned from other FRBs.

Despite hundreds of FRB events discovered to date, only a fraction of those have been pinpointed to their host galaxies, said study co-author Yuxin (Vic) Dong, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, astronomy Ph.D. student in Fongs lab and member of CIERA. Within that small fraction, only a few came from a dense galactic environment, but none have ever been seen in such a compact group. So, its birthplace is truly rare.

Although astronomers have uncovered up to 1,000 FRBs since first discovering them in 2007, the sources behind the blinding flashes remain stubbornly uncertain. While astronomers have yet to reach a consensus on the possible mechanisms behind FRBs, they generally agree that FRBs must involve a compact object, such as a black hole or neutron star.

By revealing the true nature of FRBs, astronomers not only could learn about the mysterious phenomena but also about the true nature of the universe itself. When radio waves from FRBs finally meet our telescopes, they have traveled for billions of years from the distant, early universe. During this cross-universe odyssey, they interact with material along the way.

Radio waves, in particular, are sensitive to any intervening material along the line of sight from the FRB location to us, Fong said. That means the waves have to travel through any cloud of material around the FRB site, through its host galaxy, across the universe and finally through the Milky Way. From a time delay in the FRB signal itself, we can measure the sum of all of these contributions.

To continue to probe FRBs and their origins, astronomers need to detect and study more of them. And with technology continually becoming more sensitive, Gordon says more detections potentially even capturing incredibly faint FRBs are right around the corner.

With a larger sample of distant FRBs, we can begin to study the evolution of FRBs and their host properties by connecting them to more nearby ones and perhaps even start to identify more strange populations, Dong said.

In the near future, FRB experiments will increase their sensitivity, leading to an unprecedented rate in the number of FRBs detected at these distances, Gordon said. Astronomers will soon learn just how special the environment of this FRB was.

The study, A fast radio burst in a compact galaxy group at z ~ 1, was supported by the National Science Foundation (award numbers AST-1909358, AST-2047919 and AST-2308182), the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement and NASA (award number GO-17277). Astronomers first detected FRB 20220610A with the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder radio telescope in Western Australia and then confirmed its origin with the European Southern Observatorys Very Large Telescope in Chile.

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'Blob-like' home of farthest-known fast radio burst is collection of seven galaxies - Northwestern Now

Typically, new stars form when diffuse atomic gas condenses into concentrations of molecular gas, forming molecular clouds. The high-density cores within these molecular clouds act as triggers for star formation. While this process is common in the inner regions of galaxies, it becomes less common toward the outer edges of galaxies.

A team of astronomers has discovered unusual star formation at the outer edge of the galaxy M83. The study utilized various instruments, including ALMA, VLA, GBT from NRAO, Subaru Telescope from NAOJ, and GALEX from NASA.

The team identified 23 molecular clouds exhibiting a distinct type of star formation at the outer edges of the galaxy M83. Unlike typical molecular clouds, only the star-forming dense cores of these clouds were observed. This discovery provides valuable insights into the physical processes involved in star formation at the far edges of galaxies.

Astronomer Jin Koda of Stony Brook University, who led this research, said,The star formation at galaxy edges has been a nagging mystery since their discovery by the NASA GALEX satellite 18 years ago.

David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University commented,Previous searches for molecular clouds in this environment were unsuccessful. Seeing the search for dense clouds associated with the outer disk finally come to fruition has been gratifying, revealing a characteristically different observational fingerprint for the molecular clouds.

The discovery of these molecular clouds has revealed a connection to a vast reservoir of diffuse atomic gas. While it is common for atomic gas to condense into dense molecular clouds, where even denser cores lead to star formation, the conversion of atomic gas to molecular clouds at the edges of galaxies was not previously evident and still needs to be solved.

Its remarkable that an undergraduate student, Amanda Lee, played a significant role in processing data from the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Very Large Array (VLA) for these findings. Her work led to the discovery of the atomic gas reservoir at the edge of the galaxy M83.

She said,We still do not understand why this atomic gas does not efficiently become dense molecular clouds and form stars. As is often the case in astronomy, pursuing answers to one mystery can lead to another. Thats why research in astronomy is exciting.

This research was presented in a press conference at the 243rd American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Astronomers revealed mysterious star formation by hearts of molecular clouds - Tech Explorist

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Spectroscopic sizing of interstellar icy grains with JWST - Nature.com

Kip Thorne works at a blackboard in a screenshot taken from a promotional video for Interstellar. Credit: Warner Brothers.

Astronomy enthusiasts are my kinda people. Like me, they love all sorts of science, and science fiction, too particularly films that lead us into a dystopian, mysterious, explorative future we cant experience in our everyday lives. One of the most intriguing recent films of this type is the 2014 effort Interstellar, which I am willing to wager theres a pretty good chance youve seen.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, the movie performed extremely well and became an instant favorite for many science nerds. The New York Times declared that Interstellar investigates the relationships between science and faith and science and the humanities and that it illustrates the symbiosis between the fields.

The film featured a cast including Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Michael Caine, and Matt Damon. Its cowriter, director, and producer was Christopher Nolan, and an executive producer was none other than Kip Thorne, the celebrated Caltech astronomer. Kip also acted as the films science consultant and wrote a tie-in book, The Science of Interstellar. He is very well known as the worlds leading expert on black holes, and is celebrated for his long body of astronomical work and collaboration with many important associates, including his good friends Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.

In 2017 Kip won the Nobel Prize along with his collaborators Rainer Weiss and Barry Barish for their major contributions to the LIGO gravitational wave detectors and the breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes. In recent years Ive had to pleasure to get to know Kip, as he is an active and frequent speaker and collaborator at the Starmus Festival, the science gatherings for which I serve on the board. Without question, he is one of the most brilliant, kind, and straight-out funny people in the entire world of astronomy and astrophysics.

Born in Logan, Utah, Kip studied at Caltech before earning masters and PhD degrees at Princeton, for the latter studying under the supervision of John Archibald Wheeler. Returning to Caltech in 1967, he soon thereafter became one of the youngest full professors in the history of the institution. He held some adjunct professorships, too, and after a long and storied career, resigned his professorship in 2009, went emeritus, and concentrated on writing and movie projects.

Aside from being one of the fathers of LIGO, Thorne is an expert on black hole cosmology, hypothetical wormhole and time travel research, relativistic stars, and assorted other astrophysical and cosmological pursuits. He is the author of a number of important books including Gravitation, the classic text coauthored with Charles Misner and John Wheeler, and the celebrated Black Holes and Time Warps.

Kips involvement in Interstellar arguably made it one of the most compelling sci-fi films not only of our time, but perhaps of all time. The story begins in 2067, when earthlings are facing a global famine. The plot moves quickly and is both hypothetical and smart enough to keep novices on their edges of their seats and to earn the respect of those who know science. McConaugheys character discovers a gravitational anomaly inside a bedroom, and the pattern leads to a NASA administrative facility. A NASA team, meanwhile, prepares to travels through a wormhole near Saturn. McConaugheys character leads a spacecraft crew on this dangerous mission.

Through the wormhole, the crew finds an ocean world complete with tidal waves, and return after experiencing time dilation, 23 years having passed on Earth and a few hours for the crew. They envision an exodus from Earth to find a habitable world. A second planet through the wormhole offers a possible habitat. During a complex set of problems, this doesnt work out, and they seek a third planet. Countless adventures follow, and allow the writers and filmmakers to explore all manner of dramatic and scientific subjects and possibilities.

Kip Thorne is unique among the world of astronomy. He has long been one of the worlds greatest experts on a panel of very important areas, those at the cutting edges of our curiosity. And yet his brilliant and groundbreaking knowledge has not limited his ability to communicate very smoothly and effectively with novices, and to entertain us all with inspiring stories.

Interstellar is a grand vision of just this mixture. If you have not seen the film, I encourage you to do so. If you have, perhaps you will sometime watch it again, and realize the story hides an advisor who made the script and the direction a little better, and a little more inspiring, toward the scientific wonder we all treasure.

David J. Eicher is Editor of Astronomy, author of 26 books on science and history, and a board member of the Starmus Festival and of Lowell Observatory.

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Kip Thorne and the mind-bending science of Interstellar | Astronomy.com - Astronomy Magazine