This article first appeared in the ColoradoBoulevard.net February 2021 print edition.
SKY Stories: Cosmologists Occupy an Art Space (Photo -ArtCenter)
In dreams began responsibility, or so the line goes.
By Garrett Rowlan
The dreams of three women JPL cosmologists, whose stories are told in conjunction with the SKY exhibit at the Williamson Art Gallery at ArtCenter, point to ways dreams and discoveries become paths to exploration of the universe. In video presentations they speak of their journeys.
– Alina Kiessling
For Alina Kiessling, it was a childhood discovery of a dinosaur bone embedded in the turf of the Australian outback that led her to think of how the Earth began and evolved.
Eventually, however, she came to believe that in this she was thinking too small, and the dinosaur bone—like the buried relic in Kubrick’s 2001—led her eventually to the stars. In her presentation, she speaks of the immensity of the universe, a vast array of stars—10 billion trillion is the number she mentions—whose contemplation began with a single fossilized bone. It is a number impossible to comprehend, perhaps only through the alembic of faith.
– Dida Markovic
“Astronomy is spiritual,” says another JPL cosmologist, Dida Markovic, who believes science can answer deep questions about space and time. She believes that the secrets of the universe can be best studied “above the clouds,” that is, with probes and telescopes to make enormous maps of the cosmos. Markovic says she always wanted to be an astronaut, and even as a child drew plans for rockets. Her research will help lead to understand dark energy, gravity, and the birth and death of our universe.
– Agnès Ferté
JPL cosmologist Agnès Ferté grew up in the French countryside, dreaming grandiose visions of glory and escape, even waiting for spaceships to whisk her away. Now at JPL, she is concerned with the bending of light waves as they cross the universe to us, and the way they distort our vision of the universe. She uses her research to, among other things, question if Einstein’s theory of relativity is correct, or 100% correct.
> This article appeared in the ColoradoBoulevard.net February 2021 print edition.
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