Interview conducted by Maegan Carberry, Daily Bruin Senior
Staff.
Professor Mark Morris is excited. After 25 years of studying the
galactic center, the new Chandra X-ray telescope has enabled him
and his colleagues from MIT and Penn State to prove the existence
of a super-massive black hole in the center of the galaxy.
Don’t worry, Morris reassures, the earth will not be sucked
into it!
 KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Professor
Mark Morris is a professor in the Physics and
Astronomy Department. He has recently shown that a black hole
dwells in th emiddle of the galaxy. As he speaks about the black
hole, his eyes brighten up like a little boy who always wanted to
be an astronaut. He studies the galaxy, because to him, the galaxy
is downtown and we live in the suburbs. Instead of skyscrapers and
bright lights, he is lured in by the stars and the challenge of
exploring the ever-surprising infinity that is the universe. In the
galactic center, there are a million times the number of stars we
see here on earth, but after living in the bright lights of L.A.,
I’m hard-pressed to imagine seeing more than five stars a
night.
But Morris can see it. He sees and thinks about many things in
the universe ““ such as how we got here, life on other
planets, the problems expensive technology cause for science and
747 airplanes with big holes in them”¦
Daily Bruin: Space is pretty far removed from earth, and
most of us forget we’re a part of it because we’re so
caught up in our lives here. Where do these worlds intersect?
Mark Morris: Space is how we understand our origins. We need to
understand galactic evolution because, in an intellectual sense, we
have to ask ourselves what our purpose in life is. For me, one of
our purposes is understanding how we got here, at least physically.
It comes even before, now that we’re here, what are we
supposed to do? It’s as strong a motivation as eating your
next meal. DB: How did we get here? MM: A bunch of people
are investigating that question from a lot of angles. I look in
galactic nuclei. We don’t live in galactic nuclei, but what
we learn in the galactic center can be applied to information about
how our star was formed and how the planets formed around it.
DB: How is this new telescope, the Chandra X-ray, going to help
you pursue this research? MM: To understand that, you’ll
have to consider the man it’s named after. Chandra was a
professor of mine at the University of Chicago. He was a great man
and a great scientist. He was one of the first people to realize
that stars have an upper mass limit. You can’t make a star
more massive than a certain limit because it will collapse on
itself. [He laughs] I’ve just condensed astrophysics into a
nutshell in saying that. But Chandra’s work implied that
there had to be a highly compressed configuration that looked like
a star. He anticipated, without calling them by name, black holes.
Compact objects, like black holes, emit copious X-rays because
their gravity is so strong that their immediate environment is
extremely energetic ““ and that’s what it takes to get
the high temperatures needed to emit X-rays. The Chandra telescope
measures X-rays. So with it, we can detect things that emit X-rays
like neutron stars, black holes and the sun. The discovery of the
super-massive black hole in the center of the galaxy is
particularly exciting. It’s been suspected for almost 30
years but never seen. DB: A lot of people’s only images
of outer space are from movies and science fiction books. How close
are our fantasies to reality? MM: The reality is probably that
the universe contains enormous surprises that we haven’t yet
uncovered. If some deity could come to me now and tell me all the
things that are going on right now that we can’t yet
appreciate, I would probably regard that as complete science
fiction. DB: What about other life forms? MM: There is a
burgeoning field called astrobiology, which studies this question.
It’s a curious subject because it’s a science with no
data. But we do know what happened on earth, and we can apply that
to the question of whether or not life can happen anywhere else.
Most of us think it can happen. But one of the reasons we
haven’t seen evidence of life yet could obviously be that we
are alone. I don’t personally think so. We’re at a
stage in the history of science where we’re on the verge of
really addressing this question. A few years ago no planets outside
of our solar system were known, and now the number is approaching
100. I’m already surprised that we haven’t stumbled
upon some very advanced civilizations. But as our abilities to peer
into the universe increase, the question of other life forms will
become more and more poignant. In fact, UCLA is a NASA center for
astrobiology, and we’re working hard at answering that
question. DB: Speaking of UCLA … the technology for space
study is rare and expensive. How equipped are you at UCLA to
conduct your research? MM: A university these days is
hard-pressed to work at the forefront of research by itself. Many
things have become national efforts. Chandra is. This is both good
and bad for science. Things get democratized ““ you have to
have a national consensus to get something done, which is good
because everyone has a say. But that guy sitting in a lab somewhere
also isn’t going to get his project done because he needs 100
other people to join in with him. Interestingly, UCLA is involved
in the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy Project.
It’s a 747 airplane with a hole big enough for an 18-wheel
truck to drive through it. The infrared telescope sits in that
hole. It flies at high altitudes to get above the earth’s
atmosphere. There’s even seating for visitors and
they’ve developed a program for teachers to go up in it. That
will fly in 2004. So that’s an exciting project the
university is working on. DB: Are we really going to be hit by
a meteor? MM: One did just pass by earth recently. About twice
as far away as the moon. That seems far, but it’s not. As the
earth orbits the sun, there are possibilities that we could hit
with something. On one hand, it’s a legitimate threat. On the
other, it’s not. The meteorite hit that took out the
dinosaurs happened 65 million years ago. The hit in Arizona was
60,000 years ago. People at NASA are studying it, but it’s
highly unlikely. However, if you took the earth’s population
and held it constant for several million years, it would be more
likely that you’d die in a meteorite impact than in an
airplane accident. I’m not very worried about these things.
But it’s not crazy for NASA to pay attention to it. DB:
Do you foresee a future where humanity is engaged in space? Will we
travel or repopulate there? MM: Yes. But one shouldn’t
make too much of that. People in science fiction talk about moving
the earth. That’s not going to happen in our lifetime. Humans
will spread their seed in some way, I’m sure. But we
don’t have the economic means to move humanity right now. We
will see the slow but sure steps toward exploring the cosmos. But
the technology isn’t there, and stars are four light years
away, which would take multiple human lifetime to travel. How would
we do that? But it will happen someday. Humans have an innate
tendency to explore, expand and colonize. They’re going to
get there.