Last week, Prof. Anca Constantin joined 14 other astronomers from the American Astronomical Society for a crash course on science policy and meetings with congressional representatives on Capitol Hill. Why was she there?
By now, I have designed and implemented a variety of astronomy and physics outreach events, which made me so painfully aware of how poorly communicated or received are our achievements, our motivation, and the need(s) for continuing our work. I wanted to be able to back up my claims to my students that I do for them more than just teaching
science or mentoring them towards a successful career in the sciences. In a time when billions of voices are screaming into the void of social media platforms, and no one seems to listen to anyone else, it felt quite momentous to sit down and have face to face conversations with the congressional offices. I want to make sure that we keep inspiring people to look up.
My studies employ multi-wavelength analyses of galaxies with actively accreting supermassive black holes in their centers. My investigations are pushing back the frontier of what we know about connecting the black hole accretion phenomenon to circum-nuclear star formation in what appears to be the faintest actively accreting galactic nuclei. I am currently developing a novel statistical analysis of multi-wavelength properties of the galaxies that host water maser emission, with the goal of significantly improving their detection rate, which is crucial for an accurate determination of the Hubble constant, for characterization of dark energy, and thus, for constraining the fate of the universe. My expertise in manipulating optical and infrared spectroscopic data allow me to tackle pioneering identifications of black hole accretion activity in galaxy mergers, and thus in finding binary black hole accreting systems, which are imperatively needed as a laboratory for testing the loudest gravitational wave events in the Universe, and thus for testing general relativity on cosmological scales. Further success in all of these research aspects are intimately related to recommendations in the current New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics for augmentation of the NSF’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grants, and for enhancements to astronomical observing facilities like GBT, ALMA, and hopefully soon JWST.
We started the day by stepping in a congressional hearing titled America in Space: Future Visions, Current Issues (in Rayburn building of the House of Representatives), where one of the witnesses was Peggy Whitson, the first female astronaut to command the International Space Station twice, and the record holder for the longest single space flight by a woman (289 days, 5 hours and 1 minute). We had only a few minutes to spare here, before we would
start our marathon of nine meetings, but it was enough to hear a politician say, with great conviction that: "If we want America to lead with a visionary and effective space program, we must be willing to commit the resources and funding stability to achieve it." So I'd say, that was a pretty good start of the day.
During the day, I visited (together with my team of three other astronomers) the offices of Senator Kaine, Senator Warner, and Representative Cline (VA), Senator Cardin, Senator Van Hollen, and Representative Hoyer (MD), Senator Markey, Senator Warren, and Representative Lynch (MA). This only entailed seven miles of walking and climbing lots of stairs up and down the Senate and the House of Representative buildings.
We were warmly welcomed in each office, and the staffers were all polite and professional. Many of them had no personal experience in science beyond high school and maybe a college course, but took great interest in our conversations, and it was heartening to realize (or remember?) that the politicians in Washington are just people too. Rep. Cline made a special effort to meet us, in between hearings, and in the hallway, and he and one of his staff members seemed eager to hear about how we use astronomy here at JMU as one of the most innovative training grounds for the future science and industry experts, whether for the future of our VA district, or for the rest of the world.
We talked with the staff of our congressional representatives about federal research grants, which support many scientists, both the established ones and the budding ones (our students). We discussed the need for adequate resources in order to retain young scientists in astronomy. Many of us science faculty, at JMU or any other university, feel burned out from applying for grant after grant with success rates less than 15 percent (which leaves many "excellent" rated projects unfunded), and from hearing that the (proposed) budget cuts might not allow for the building of that amazing new telescope WFIRST that the whole organization of astronomers envisioned as the number one priority, which will open the skies for us, literally with hundreds of times better resolution and signal than Hubble SpaceTelescope did for us already. And that is mind-boggling.
Whether or not we need a reminder, it remains true that we are all alone, yet together, sailing through this unique and largely unknown universe of ours, on our spaceship Earth. I came home more determined than ever to share all I know and I want to find out about the Universe, with whomever will listen.
