An article appearing in the Jan. 27 issue of Nature made big news last week when a team of scientists reported they’d found the earliest and most distant galaxy in the universe, one that came into being fewer than 500 million years after the Big Bang. The UCSC astronomer who served as team leader for the project answers our puny, insignificant (yet somehow also universal… right?) questions.
What do you do for a living?
I have a joint appointment as an Astronomer in the University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory and a Professor at UCSC in the Department of Astronomy. Both are located on the UCSC campus, located largely in the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building. I do research on galaxies when the universe was young, just 500-800 million years after the Big Bang. Since the universe is 13.7 billion years old this involves looking back in time for 12-13 billion years with the Hubble Space Telescope. To help us do this I work on big astronomy projects like the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope on the ground.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing that?
I have always been interested in the origins of life, particularly humans, and so may have been a paleontologist or a paleoanthropologist.
What do you do in your free time?
We like to explore wild places (e.g., Kenya/Tanzania/Serengeti, Alaska, and Botswana) and are interested in animal behavior. I like to do wildlife photography.
What brought you to Santa Cruz?
A great opportunity to be part of one of the world’s best astronomy groups at UCSC.
What’s your favorite street?
West Cliff Drive
Name something you’re excited about.
The great opportunities we have in the next decade for learning about how the universe grew and developed to what we see today, and how life started and evolved in the microscopic part of our galaxy where we live.
Name a pet peeve.
Politicians who lie egregiously and the media who don’t call them on their lies, or worse even add support to the lies… (though my spouse also suggests I should add here “people who drive very slowly on our country
roads”)….
Secret star crush?
Sigourney Weaver—she is a really good actress who plays great tough roles.
What are you reading?
I am re-reading Collapse by Jared Diamond and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in the last three years?
Life is short and unpredictable. Live it fully, with honesty and integrity.
