Exploring the Universe with Robert Fesen
If you’re on campus right now, there’s a good chance you’re procrastinating studying for tonight’s astronomy midterm. Or your roommate is. Or your best friend. Probably all of you. Astronomy professor Robert Fesen wields power over the summer GPAs of 229 students on campus. And no, he doesn’t mind that you’re only in it for the SCI or SLA credit. In fact, he prefers it that way. It was the one of the first things he asked me.
“Are you taking it for lab requirement?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“Good.” Then, seeing my chagrin, he added: “No, it’s okay. That’s the way it should be.”
There’s a sense of “wonderment” in the way his introductory summer classes approach the material, he said. It’s often more fun than research, plagued by a politicized scientific method, flawed publication process and “cold, detailed, meticulous, justifiable, convincing” writing.
“There’s a freshness and a newness to this stuff for you guys,” he said. “This is where you get to say, ‘Hey, look at this!’”
More than anything else, he said he hopes to convey a sense of the universe’s sheer scale to students who are often too absorbed in their cell phones to look up while crossing Wheelock Street. To cultivate a sense of awe. It’s the reason for the feigned disbelief in all of his lectures—refrains of “No way! Really?! Get out!” echo throughout Filene Auditorium.
It’s an exciting time to be studying astronomy, Fesen said.
“We’re still unraveling things,” he said. Fesen researches the structure inside Cassiopeia A, a supernova remnant, which can be seen glistening red, gold and green in a poster just outside his office. He is also working on dissecting a black speck of debris silhouetted against the galaxy: What is it? What is it made of? How is it organized?
“Things keep changing, and 100 years ago — or 50 or 30 or 20 — I would have explained astronomy to you totally differently,” he said. In another hundred, who knows what will have changed? (Don’t look now, those preparing for tonight’s Astro 2/3 exam, but entanglement theory challenges the absoluteness of light speed, and dark matter may amount to a flaw in our understanding of gravity).
The big question, he said, grabbing a calculator from the desk, is whether humans can possibly comprehend the universe like we can take apart a calculator, studying its tiny solar panel and electrical innards, understanding how its mechanics produce math. He shook the calculator in the air. Or, are we instead like the dog faced with this same piece of plastic no less physically real, yet in all significance entirely inaccessible?
Yes, to answer a different question: Fesen does have at least a bit of mad scientist in him. Enthusiasm mounting, he became the hapless dog, widening his eyes, sticking his tongue out and feigning panting, biting into the calculator case before letting it fall to the desk.
And no, to answer another: he has not been telling the same jokes in all his 22 years at the College; they come in phases. The “No way! Get out!” has made a comeback for 13X, he says. His current favorite?
An atom walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, you look pretty sad. What’s up?” The atom says, “I lost an electron.” The bartender says, “Are you sure?” The atom says, “I’m positive.”
Hobbies :
Favorite moon: Saturn’s Iapetus. Scientists may know why it’s half snow-white, half coal-black, but its perfect equatorial mountain ridge remains a mystery.
Starbucks order: Hot chocolate. After years of all-nighters, he can rally without caffeine.
Extraterrestrial life: UFOs don’t exist (If you’re in Roswell, N.M., he recommends the art museum). “There’s absolutely life in space,” he said. “Unfortunately, most of it is probably microbial.”