Charting a Cosmic Destiny
by William Valerio
For its 12th Annual Kaczmarczik Lecture, "From the Big Bang to the Nobel Prize," the Physics Department welcomed Dr. John C. Mather, a Senior Astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The event was held in Drexel's Main Auditorium, which was filled to capacity with faculty, students, and numerous members of the scientific community. Several local high schools were also invited to bring graduating seniors as part of the Physics Department's annual Open House Day.
The Kaczmarczik Lecture Series is a significant event on campus, as numerous Nobel Laureates have been invited in recent years to speak to. The goal of this lecture series is to expose a much wider audience to fascinating concepts at the forefront of physics research.
President Constantine Papadakis began the lecture with a few introductory remarks about Mather and his innovative research: "To describe his prominence in the physics community requires only two words: Nobel Laureate." Papadakis went on to praise Mather because he "continues NASA's tradition of groundbreaking science."
Drexel and the Physics department have formed a strong bond with NASA in recent decades. President Papadakis informed the crowd that Drexel is the only university in the country with three graduates that have flown missions in space. Numerous co-op students have also worked with NASA's reduced gravity project, commonly known as the "vomit comet." According to Papadakis, these are two of the many reasons why CoAS is the most in-demand college at Drexel.
Additional remarks were made by CoAS Dean Donna Murasko and Dr. Gordon Richards of the Physics department before Mather was greeted with enthusiastic applause. He began his talk by describing what seemed to be a difficult goal: "I want to tell you—from the beginning to the end—the history of the universe." Mather outlined scientific endeavors to determine the origin of the universe, as well as evidence indicating that the event occurred around 13.7 billion years ago. He astonished the crowd by suggesting that, at the time of the Big Bang, the volume of the entire universe was compressed to the size of a golf ball.
Mather's lecture explored complex material such as the existence of dark matter, the effect known as "Doppler shift," and methods used to determine the distance of stars. Despite the complex nature of such physics calculations, this seemingly-esoteric information was made very accessible to the average audience member, however, as Mather employed stick figures in his presentation to simplify his ideas and equations. He skillfully used clear examples to illustrate challenging concepts, such as his assertion that "we are all made of exploded, recycled parts of stars." He maintained a humorous tone throughout the lecture while joking with the audience; at one point, Mather referred to a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip in which the Big Bang was described as a "horrendous space kablooey."
Such comedic touches were woven into the lecture while Mather elaborated on his groundbreaking work with space telescopes. Much of the recognition for Mather's research in the field stems from his involvement with the Cosmic Background Explorer Project (COBE). In 2006, the Nobel Prize was awarded jointly to Mather and George F. Smoot of Berkeley for their work on COBE and "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."
Mather's most recent work has been on the James Webb Space Telescope Project (JWST), which is planned to launch in 2013. This revolutionary telescope aims to look farther into space than the Hubble Telescope in order to witness the birth of stars and planets. He also showed the audience the proposal for the massive telescope, which would measure 100 meters in diameter and would be the length of a football field. The code name for this project—"Overwhelmingly Large Telescope"—appears to be appropriate.
The lecture concluded with a question-and-answer session in which even more perplexing concepts were raised: What existed before the Big Bang? What's at the center of a black hole? What is our cosmic destiny? Mather looked to future generations of scientists to solve these issues as he said, "If you become a physicist, you'll have a chance to answer these important questions."
William Valerio is majoring in English and is also the Managing Editor of ASK.
