Category Archives: astronomy

astronomy news, astrophysics, cosmology, cosmos

It’s Matter…

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and It’s Out There

But, how do you find it? That’s the question that confronts astronomers who study the large-scale structure of the universe. There are two types of matter that they can study-ordinary, baryonic matter (protons, neutrons, and the subatomic particles that make up hydrogen, helium, and other elements (which themselves combine to form stars, planets, and galaxies) and then there’s dark matter, which isn’t baryonic. To get at the problem of how much dark matter there is, you have to corral all the baryonic matter. For a long time, astronomers have known that there’s a substantial mass of baryonic matter out there. The problem was to find it. You have to do a cosmic accounting of it. And, it’s not easy. You can’t just look out at the sky and easily spot the protons, neutrons, and other particles. You have to look at what it does to light.

The way to do that is to look at light from distant quasars through a spectrograph, a device that breaks up the light into its component wavelengths. As that light travels through space between the quasars and us, it gets absorbed by baryonic matter. And that leaves little dark lines (called absorption lines) in the spectrum of the quasar’s light. Those lines correspond to various elements that exist in the intergalactic medium.

Mike Shull and Charles Danforth (of the University of Colorado) used the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) to look at quasars and map the distribution of baryonic matter in the local universe (the four billion or so light-years around us). They’ve now mapped enough of that “local” intergalactic medium to be able to say they’ve found about half of the missing baryonic matter there. (Read the details here.)

Shull says they’re finding structure in this matter, which is a big deal. “We think we are seeing the strands of a web-like structure that forms the backbone of the universe,” he said. “What we are confirming in detail is that intergalactic space, which intuitively might seem to be empty, is in fact the reservoir for most of the normal, baryonic matter in the universe.”

Of course, there are many more quasars to observe, and mapping the entire universe (in all directions) will take more time and a new instrument that is scheduled to go up on HST later this year. Stay tuned!

astronomy, gender, Science

Women in Science

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The Future

Over the weekend I read a story about a study that concluded that women aren’t in “hard” science because they aren’t interested in it or have somehow gotten disillusioned with it. The piece raised a few red flags for me because these studies often seem to come to some conclusion based on biology or temperament that somehow gets generalized out to ALL women, and thus seems to feed into a feeling (by some) in the community that women don’t belong in science. Of course, that’s hogwash. Women (like men) belong wherever they feel they can make a contribution or an advance, science included.

Back when I was in graduate school we heard a lot of horror stories about female science students being mistreated, snubbed, or downright abused by male scientists (advisors, professors, fellow students). The worst usually involved some graduate advisor making advances at his student and if she didn’t comply, making it clear that she’d never graduate/advance. In one case, the guy actually went so far as to reserve a room for him and his student at a meeting (without her knowledge until she arrived at the hotel and was confronted with that nasty fact). Given stories like that, and so many others, I am surprised that anybody still wonders why women have a hard time getting taken seriously in science. Sure, science is a rigorous way of knowing things, and the classes can be difficult, but it’s not privileged knowledge that is preserved only for those who have certain chromosomal arrangements.

Things have improved since the days when women weren’t even allowed to go to college or vote, so I suppose that’s some consolation, but I still wonder why it is that many of these studies about women’s interests or advancement in science ALWAYS seem to come back to biology and temperament. As if certain arrangements of chromosomes and emotions are somehow wrong for science while others are “right.” Seems to me that passion and interest are the same, no matter what genes one bears. I doubt it enters anybody’s mind to question why more men don’t go into science. It would be interesting to see the results of a well-conducted survey, don’t you think?

Anyway, I thought it was interesting to read the article a week before the annual University of Massachusetts-Lowell-led Women in Science and Engineering Day, which is held every year at UMASS-Lowell. It’s a day when the organizers bring in middle-school girls from around the region to hear talks from female scientists, and participate in “hands-on” workshops in science-related careers. Sometimes the girls get to play “CSI” detective, in other workshops they learn about being a doctor or a pilot or science illustrator or museum curator or meteorologist. One year the woman who is president of iRobot, the ROOMBA folks, gave a talk, another year they had a pilot from Southwest Airlines. I’ve taught at the event a few times, leading girls through a series of writing projects where they take science press releases and turn them into stories for the media. It’s a lot of fun, very rewarding, and even their teachers get into the workshops. I always hope that a few of the girls will turn to science, once they realize that it’s not the domain of one gender or social class.

I’m not teaching it this year–too many conflicts, but I hope to do it again in the future. It’s a great thing, and I notice that a lot of universities do it. It’s kind of sobering to think that in these so-called “modern” times we still have to do stuff like this, but I guess we do.