We have a guest writer this week, Professor Gerard Williger, an astronomer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Louisville (Kentucky), whose work has included the study of quasars, as you will see.
The image above is an artist’s conception that depicts a distant galaxy with an active quasar at its center. A region about the size of the solar system, powered by a supermassive black hole, pours out 100 to 1,000 times as much light as an entire galaxy containing a hundred billion stars, generating a glow that outshines its host galaxy and everything in it. Radiation pressure from the vicinity of the black hole pushes material away from the galaxy’s center. The “quasar winds” propel hundreds of solar masses of material outward into the galaxy disk each year. This affects the entire galaxy as the material snowplows into surrounding gas and dust. Click here for more about quasars from NASA. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and J. Olmsted (STScI)
Click here for other “Kentucky Science Conversations“ posts. This post also appeared in The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky) as a “Science in the Bluegrass“ column.
When I was little, I always asked, “Why?”. I never grew out of that, which led me to become a scientist — a professional astronomer. That has involved more travel, and more Catholic connections, than I ever expected. Along the way, I have realized that the Big Questions in astronomy are often similar to the Big Questions in faith, like “Where did we come from?” or “How did we get here?”
Walsh Jesuit High School near Akron, Ohio led me to dive deeply into the Big Questions. I then went to Ohio State, doing science and math while becoming a Eucharistic Minister in the Newman Center. I met more student scientists with faith, and was happy that at least some people didn’t think I was an atheist. I also had my first research experience, studying SS-433, an interesting black hole the mass of a big star.
In Cambridge, England, I pursued a doctorate in astronomy while learning about the very checkered and bloody past of Catholicism in England. Catholics are only about 10% of the population there, but they are devout and stick together. I met Catholic scientists, and had the pleasure of serving the Novus Ordo Mass, which gave me an appreciation of my father’s serving the Tridentine Mass in his native Budapest. My research included writing computer programs to simulate the evolution of gas clouds in intergalactic space as seen in the foreground of quasars, which are bright “lighthouse galaxies”.
After Cambridge, I moved to La Serena in Chile, a beach town 50 miles west of the big international astronomical observatory at Cerro Tololo. I did not complain to go to a Catholic country. I just needed to learn Spanish. I found a friend in a seminarian who spoke no English — perfect! The Archbishop there spoke English, and sometimes slipped astronomy references into his homilies. I appreciated having Catholic holidays off and seeing religious processions, but learned that Chileans who practice their faith are very devout but are only 10-15% of the population. I was happy to get my hands on some of the biggest telescopes at the time, and learned how to use them to observe quasars.
The next place was Heidelberg, Germany. That was great. I have relatives in the country and the cuisine is “home-cooking” for me. I attended the university chaplaincy there, dedicated to Edith Stein just before she was canonized, and met more friends for life. I did more research on quasars, frequently travelling to use German time on telescopes in Spain and Chile (as Germany itself is cloudy).
Then it was on to NASA in Maryland, where I frequented the University of Maryland Catholic Student Center and also went to Hungarian and German-language Masses in Washington. I worked with the Hubble Space Telescope team on its imaging spectrograph. I continued to study quasars, and also started studying young stars because there were young star experts there. Young stars led me to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and an ultraviolet research satellite for studying them.
Lastly I came to the University of Louisville! Here I (accidentally) started the Archdiocesan Faith & Science Dialogue Group, by inviting Archbishop Kurtz to one of the lectures connected with the 2017 solar eclipse. He answered! That answer has led to this Archdiocese becoming a faith and science hub, as I could see at this year’s Society of Catholic Scientists “St. Albert Initiative”, where over 400 students came to Bellarmine University for a day of discussing faith and science.
I love getting to know the Church in various countries and meeting the faithful, who teach me new ways to appreciate and connect with the Lord while chasing those Big Questions.
