Beyond science fiction: Prof. Jayant Murthy’s vision for space exploration

Science is fun. Science is rigorous. For Professor Jayant Murthy, science is about the process of solving a problem. A former Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Prof. Murthy is globally renowned for his work in ultraviolet background radiation who, among his many contributions, has had the rare honour of having an asteroid ‘215884 Jayantmurthy’ named after him for his invaluable contributions to the New Horizons mission. Furthermore, he is a part of one of the few groups that work on low-cost missions that are later applied on a larger scale. 

With exponential knowledge in astronomy since his early days, Professor Jayant Murthy discusses factors such as the advancements in exoplanet discovery. From the possibilities of having an ultraviolet telescope on the moon to the possibilities of outer space settlements in the near future, he talks about the influence of science fiction and the accessibilities of opportunities for such projects. Join us as Prof. Murthy shares his thoughts on possibilities of life on Mars while addressing public skepticism towards space exploration with conspiracies of the moon landing and advocating for scientific literacy.  

Transcript

Ashay Kapur:

Welcome to the Sony Pictures Networks Go Beyond podcast where we travel into interstellar space to uncover the extraordinary. I’m your host Akshay Kapur. Today, we have a guest who truly lives at the frontier of scientific discovery, former Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, his contributions have led to the International Astronomical Union or IAU naming an asteroid after him. It is a true pleasure to welcome Professor Jayant Murthy to the podcast. Professor Murthy’s work involves NASAs New Horizons mission, which includes studying the ultraviolet background radiation of the nearby Universe and his work continues to enable us to expand our knowledge of the universe we inhabit. Professor Murthy, welcome to the Go Beyond Podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you here. 

Can you tell us how you developed a passion for physics and a pursuit in astrophysics?

Jayant Murthy:

Well, you know, I don’t really know I’ve always been interested in science. So, I wanted to figure out how things worked and that was from the time I was five years old or so. So, astronomy and physics, probably, I would say, partly due to Neil Armstrong. I watched the moon landing and, and I’m sure that had a big role to play, that as well as science fiction.

Akshay Kapur:

Right. And it sounds like, I think Neil Armstrong, if I’m not mistaken, is famous for his quote, ‘One small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind.’ it sounds like your study of the ultraviolet background radiation is in that same giant leap, pushing the boundaries of what we know today. Could you tell us a little bit about how you got involved with NASA’s New Horizons mission? How you developed a penchant for within astrophysics, which is a large subject, you know, a passion for that specialization of background radiation. How did that come to you?

Jayant Murthy:

Well, that just sort of happens when you get your PhD, you have to do your PhD in some field. And when I joined at Hopkins, we were well known for working in ultraviolet astronomy, we sent up a lot of rockets. My own PhD project was a space shuttle project. We had an experiment on the space shuttle and so, we were working on the UV background. And it just so happened that after that, there were other missions that helped things like Galax and one of the things that’s its well suited for, because it’s so far away from the sun, you don’t get a lot of the foreground emission that you would get from the solar system. So, you get to see the real night sky. Light from our own galaxy, and light from the stuff between galaxies for the extra galactic stuff. And so, myself and my old thesis advisor Dichenry, we were invited to become part of the New Horizons team, because we had been working in the UV background. And so, we’ve got some great new results, not yet ready to go public but getting close.

Akshay Kapur:

(laughs) Well, I won’t ask you to officially comment on those results, then if you’ve not yet published, but I would ask you, what, perhaps are some of the insights that the team at the New Horizons Mission hopes to learn that inform all, you know, other areas of astrophysics or inform as laypeople the knowledge of the universe? 

Jayant Murthy:

Sure, the part of the problem of being a professional astronomer is that you work in often esoteric subjects. And so, its not necessarily things that can be explained, as Feynman said to one’s grandmother. (Akshay laughs) So, the stuff that we do is, is really we’re looking at what’s called the extragalactic background. And this is part of a continuum that goes all the way from gamma rays up to the microwave background. So, you know three-degree microwave background, which is left over from the Big Bang. And so there are different parts of that background throughout the spectrum. And so, what we do is we work on part of that. What its relationship is to other things well, we have to have a comprehensive model for the universe. And that model has to explain everything. So, we play a part in that. We try to understand what the universe is made out of.

Akshay Kapur:

Right, and I do want to clarify, for those who may not be familiar, Could you differentiate between interstellar space extra galactic background and some of these common terms that we hear when we talk about the study of astrophysics?

Jayant Murthy:

So Interstellar is exactly what it sounds like between stars and that’s the stuff in our own galaxy. So, we call that the background radiation that we see there, diffuse galactic light, because it comes from our galaxy. And its largely Starlight scattered by interstellar dust grades, not the dust that you get in your bedroom, but this is dust grains that’s maybe 50 atoms in size up to a micron in size 10. What is that a 1,000th of a millimeter in size?

Akshay Kapur:

Wow!

Jayant Murthy:

And we get extra galactic light, which is stuff from outside our galaxy. So, because we’re looking at ultraviolet, it’s probably light that comes from relatively close to us. Not way out at the edges like JWST is seeing but stuff from near us.

Akshay Kapur:

Understood, and I know that your work developing low costar sensors for CubeSat class satellites, if I’ve got the term correctly, caters into this study. I always want to clarify if my understanding is correct, that it caters into the study? And if so, I’d love to learn about where do these CubeSat class satellites fit into the entire analysis and research that you’re doing? And also, how do you envision, these advancements shaping the future of space exploration and satellite technology?

Jayant Murthy:

Sure, so let me start with the cube sats. And that is something that actually I think that’s a really innovative thing that I came up with you know, one of the few truly innovative things that I’ve done in my life. So, maybe a decade ago, these guys in the UK, they launched a Google Nexus phone on a satellite mission.

Akshay Kapur:

Right?

Jayant Murthy:

And all my life, I’ve been told that going to space is expensive. (AK Laughs) And these guys bought a phone from a store, and they launched it. And so, I thought, Well! You know why can’t we do that? And it just so happened, we got a good crop of graduate students who were specifically interested in doing astronomical instrumentation. So, I said, let’s start building these cheap projects to go into space. We started with a balloon project, just to get some experience. And we did some good balloon flights now primarily, we use them for outreach. It’s great! We go to the Indian Institute of Science for instance, and on their Science Day 10,000 kids come and they watch us launch our balloons. So, is really that outreach.

Akshay Kapur:

But may I just ask for a clarification if you could explain what a balloon flight is?

Jayant Murthy:

So, these high-altitude balloons, we fill them with hydrogen, we used to use helium because we were scared of hydrogen. Right. But helium is, is a national resource. They are needed for medical machines, MRI machines and stuff. So, we switched to hydrogen, which is perfectly safe as long as you do it outside. And we’ve launched these balloons, they typically have small payloads. We tried to do astronomy, but it’s difficult to do from balloons, because they’re small balloons, I mean, just a lot of technical difficulties.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Jayant Murthy:

And of course, in Bangalore, we’ve had such bad weather that we just haven’t had opportunities. So, from there, we moved into building instruments for space. And one of the things we built was a small telescope that was supposed to go to the moon, with the team Indus, the Indian entrance for the Google XPRIZE. But that turned out to go nowhere, largely because people underestimated the cost of going to the moon. And other things we built was we thought we would build a small camera that would take pictures of the sky. We sent that on an ISRO mission, and it got great pictures. So, we showed that what we can build actually will work in space. And the amazing thing is that the cost of that was only about two lakhs.

Akshay Kapur:

Wow! That’s significantly cheaper than most other satellite missions.

Jayant Murthy:

Absolutely. Its extraordinarily cheap. No, you can’t compare us with JWST. We’re not going to do the science that they do.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Jayant Murthy:

But we’re also not costing $10 billion dollars.

Akshay Kapur:

Right. (Laughs)

Jayant Murthy:

So, this is what we’re trying to do now. We’re working with some private guys. But the important thing about this is that we’re training students and so we’ve got five PhDs already done, the sixth PhD is finishing in the next few months. And these are people who have no trouble getting jobs anywhere. Because they are doing this unique work and we’re one of the few groups that are actually working in this low-cost space missions. And then they use that, and they apply it to bigger missions or going into other space companies. So, this really is a good program.

Akshay Kapur:

Right? No, it absolutely sounds like to use a pun from what we’re talking about, it sounds like a great launching platform. (laughs) 

I wanted to understand. So, I’m sorry if I missed this, but where would this at the CubeSat class satellites eventually sit to help you with conducting the studies?

Jayant Murthy:

Right. Now, that’s an important question. And it turns out again, we learn as we go along. And we thought that the balloon programs would help us It turns out that it’s not so great for that. We thought we could do small cube sets turns out that you need a certain size. So, we need a large cube set, not a small cube set. And so, the problem is that it costs $10,000 a kg to go into space. And that is expensive for us. So that’s where it is now. The great thing about the stuff that I do the ultraviolet astronomy is that you don’t actually need big payloads

And even the cost is not so much. But for us, we’re a small group, where for us $10,000 a kg even 10 kg is about $100,000 and it gets expensive, right? We’re hoping to get trying to get free launches.

Akshay Kapur:

We’re talking about your PhD students who have been working with you on the cube sats and we’re talking about the launching platform. I think it would be remissive if we missed your launching platform and talked about, you know, the studies that that developed you into who you are today. So just with that, we’d love to learn a little bit about, you know, your academic background, and the things that lead to you, not just having a launching platform in the field, but also gaining the recognition and having the asteroid named after you.

Jayant Murthy:

So, the asteroid itself is, I would say, a relatively small thing. It sounds good to me. I mean, it’s good to have something floating around in space for long after we’re all dead and gone. 

Akshay Kapur:

(Laughs)

Jayant Murthy:

And that’s a nice thing. But the main thing about the asteroid is that I think is important is that it brought so much attention, which I think is great to popularize astronomy. You know, we in science, we think we do a lot of exciting things. And they really are exciting to us. But very often you don’t get the public knowledge of what you’re doing. And what this asteroid has done, is that it’s really given me an opportunity to talk to groups that I normally don’t talk to. So, I’ve been talking to local housing associations, for instance, the newspapers, of course, they picked it up, but I’ve been talking to the newspapers for years, that’s not such a big thing. But talking to kids, talking to people who are not otherwise interested in astronomy, it gives me a chance to do that. Science takes a second preference to everyone no? everyone is more interested in politics or money or whatever, or cricket, or whatever it is. (Akshay laughs) But the stuff that we do is also exciting. And that’s what this asteroid has given me a chance to convey.

Akshay Kapur:

Absolutely!  I think it definitely is fascinating. We see so much more science fiction and pop culture today than perhaps ever before. Especially, in the movies, and now with TV shows. When you talk about science being interesting, is there was there a pivotal moment in your life, which I know you mentioned the moon landing. But did you have any people you looked up to who inspired you to continue your pursuit when, you know, perhaps, the North Star was hard to find?

Jayant Murthy:

You know, for me, I think I’m slightly different personality in that sense. So, when I was growing up, it was not so much people that I that I was excited by, but more the just the concepts. So, I knew I wanted to do something in science. So, I said, okay, I’m going to do physics, and physics, I just understand physics. Not necessarily all the equations, but I have a sense of what is right and what is wrong. If I multiply this by a factor of two, then I should multiply that by a factor of four. If that doesn’t happen, then I think something is wrong. So that’s the way my mind works. And why astronomy I think, partly, I went to Johns Hopkins for my PhD. One of the reasons I went there was because that was the time for Space Telescope got to Hopkins. And so, this was really a wonderful opportunity to work with Space Telescope. The reality is that it was too early. So, they were busy on programmatic stuff, and I never really got a chance to work with them. But then I got interested, then you look and see who are the people that that you can work with. So, we had three astronomers at the time and so I picked one of them. And, and that was how I got into astronomy, then they said, this is the project we have available why don’t you do it? So, to me, what is really fascinating about science is not so much the result. And I believe this is true of most scientists, it’s the problem that is exciting, it’s solving the problem. 

Akshay Kaput:

Hmmn. It definitely speaks to an interesting quality I’m gaining from you is an innate sense of curiosity.

Jayant Murthy:

Thats the thing, the curiosity and the desire to work through and see what’s at the end of it. Why is this the way it is? It could be anything, it could be anything, it didn’t have to be the background radiation, that was just an accident.

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Jayant Murthy:

If I were going into science, if I were going into astronomy, now, I would probably work on extrasolar planets.

Akshay Kapur:

Interesting. Interesting. And why do you say that?

Jayant Murthy:

When I was in college, when I was doing my PhD, we knew of one star with planets, the sun, we didn’t know there were no other planets discovered. Now you look out and use, every star has a planet. And all those systems are so strange. They have Jupiter sized worlds going closer to the star than Mercury. They have moon around planets they are all so fascinating, all these different scenarios. I just look at least as a layperson, now, but I find that fascinating as a layperson.

AKshay Kapur:

No, I can totally understand where you’re coming from, but it does sound fascinating to explore things that are so almost inconceivable to you know, the human mind until you stumble across them through your research.

Jayant Murthy:

One of the reasons I got into science, astronomy was because of science fiction. But I talked, I was talking to a young student the other day. And what she told me is that she got into biology because of science fiction, just because the way that science fiction has changed.

Akshay Kapur:

Thats truly fascinating. What opportunities do you see for collaboration and innovation in the field of astrophysics, because of this increasing push towards pursuing these sorts of heavenly goals of you know, landing on Mars setting up a colony or a self-sustainable city on Mars?

Jayant Murthy:

So of course, reading science fiction, this was the goal to set up cities on Mars and the moons of Jupiter and so on and those are great. Now what we want to do is, we would like to build partnerships with some of the people who are going out to do these things, one of the things we would really like to do is to set up a lunar observatory, a telescope on the moon. We’re not asking for very much. Every space mission has extra space and so we’re just saying, no cost to you, or no extra cost to you. Let us take a little bit of that space. And we’ll put a small telescope on the moon, or on Mars, or on the journey from the Earth to Mars, wherever it is, let’s do some science.

Ashay Kapur:

Right.

Jayant Murthy:

People are receptive, the younger people especially are receptive to this, but always you need money. So, the kind of stuff that we do if we can do it for a few lakhs, then yes, that’s great! If we want to do more expensive things, then that starts to become a problem. 

Akshay Kapur:

Right.

Jayant Murthy:

Yes, opportunities are there, I don’t know how we access them.

Akshay Kapur:

Interesting. In an ideal world if opportunities are all equally accessible, is there a particular opportunity you will be fascinated in pursuing in this vein?

Jayant Murthy:

What I would like to do is to put a telescope in the ultraviolet on the moon. And I’ll tell you why it’s because what we’re interested in is looking out at the galaxy and the extra galactic stuff. I told you, that was my interest. 

Akshay Kapur: 

Yeah.

Jayant Murthy:

So, if we put a telescope on the moon, in this particular ultraviolet band, there’s no stuff that you see from our own solar system, you’re looking straight out into deep space. 

Akshay Kapur:

Hmmn…

Jayant Murthy:

And we could just sit there for a year, for five years, ten years. I mean, whatever time you want, you just sit there and just go deeper and deeper, fainter and fainter and fainter. And to see what the sky is like.

You get side benefits from that, like, for instance, the search for near earth asteroids. One of the things that we do, because we’re looking at these big fields out in space, you get to see any asteroids that come through. So, if you get these near-earth asteroids, the things that we suspect of coming and hitting the Earth, possibly hitting the earth, then we’ll catch them. So, you get the side benefits. But my main interest is looking out deep.

Akshay Kapur:

Right. No, absolutely. We’re talking about placing a telescope on the moon and we’re talking about developing an interest amongst the general population for astrophysics. And yet you see people on earth you know, detesting or disputing the moon landings, claiming they were fake. We have people on Earth who, even today claiming that the earth is flat. What would you say to some of this backlash, which is, perhaps it in some ways, a very odd backlash that the Astronomy and Astrophysics community is facing from the general population? How would you respond to that?

Jayant Murthy:

I’ve never known how to answer people like that because I’ve been on TV shows with astrologers. And it’s always difficult because as scientists we’re constrained to tell the truth. And other people are not. The astrologers, these conspiracy people they don’t have to tell the truth. And so, it’s a simple matter to go out and look, you go out you fly in a plane, you can see that the Earth is round. You look at the shadow Earth on the moon, you see its round.

There are pictures of the Apollo landers taken from Chandrayaan, we see these. So, if you see pictures from the space station. Now, how can all of these be part of this massive government conspiracy, with all the governments in the world? But this doesn’t convince people? And I don’t know how to at some point, I can’t try. I know there are people who do and I’m very grateful for the people who do the hard work and it’s something that I cannot do.

Akshay Kapur: 

Understandable, but it does leave me to then ask you as the former director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, what do you consider to be perhaps the most pressing challenges facing the field of astrophysics today, both in India and maybe even on a global level? And how do you think they can be addressed?

Jayant Murthy:

I think both in India and on a global level, we’re starting to get into the era where science is not considered so important. We were asked about what are we doing for the people? Meaning and by that they mean, not knowledge? But they mean are we helping farmers grow their tomatoes? Are we are designing flyovers; this is the kind of stuff we’re asked to do. And this is not what science is intended for. The reason that we put money into academics in general of which science is a part of this, is because we know that putting money into academics has this knock down effect. It’s no accident that Silicon Valley grew up around Stanford and Berkeley, no accident that the healthcare industry in Maryland, grew up around Hopkins. In Bangalore, it’s no accident that Bangalore is the science and technologies Institute city of India, because of the Indian Institute of Science. So, we know that it has this effect and yet we want scientists to be technicians. 

And so, this is a global problem that there just is not enough of an understanding that basic research. I keep saying science, but I mean history, I mean English, languages, whatever it is, academics are important. 

Now in India, what we’re facing is two things. One is that there is not enough money into science, we put about point 0.7% of our GDP into science, the US puts about two and a half percent, China’s putting two and a half 3%. Whatever it is, we put in about 1/3 of the money that in the US or China do on a much smaller GDP, a much smaller, total budget. And so, this is not going to give us any great results. Yes, we have people who do work seriously who do world class work. But you’re not going to get the big breakthroughs because we just don’t put enough money into that. 

But if you’re doing science, you’re doing things that you’ve never done before. And if you’re trying to subject that to the normal government bureaucracy that’s impossible. And again, this is a problem that I’m familiar with, but it is also a worldwide problem as people get more careful with how money is spent, which I understand. It’s just not applicable to research.

Akshay Kapur: 

Right. So, Professor Murthy, we talked about Mars missions being conducted by individuals on Earth. There seems to be some conversation out there that the US government finally admitted to the existence of UAVs or the idea of unidentified astral phenomenon. Speaking from a pop cultural context, do you believe in little green men on Mars when we go there eventually? Do you feel that we’ll stumble across a Martian civilization? How would you perhaps in a more serious note contextualize the existence of UAVs, or the unidentified astral phenomenon? How do you, where do you see it fitting into the field of astrophysics research?

Jayant Murthy:

So, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll stick to UFOs unidentified flying objects. But anyway, so I absolutely believe that there are unidentified flying objects in the most general sense, by which I mean, that there are things that we don’t know what they’re due to. I don’t believe that this is that they’re aliens coming in from some independent state. The distances are too large. We’re stuck with the speed of light, there’s just no way that aliens can ever come to the earth. I don’t believe they’ve ever come to the earth. 

Akshay Kapur: 

Right. 

Jayant Murthy:

As far as life on Mars, I don’t think we’ll find little green men there. But what they find are Martian life, Martian bacteria. I think it’s quite likely that life has travelled from the Earth to Mars. But we’ve sent so many spacecrafts over. There must have been an exchange of rocks between the Earth and Mars. So, I think it’s quite like there might be some life there. Maybe, maybe Martian life, maybe Earth life maybe there’s other places in the solar system, maybe Europa, which has this huge underwater ocean, maybe Titan, which has nitrogen and methane. So, there’s always chances of finding life there. And a really exciting possibility that I’m sure will happen at some point is that we’ll get to talk to other people, and I’m deliberately calling them people, intelligent beings who are maybe not in our own solar system, but who are far off. And we will find out that these people are there and that would be so exciting because we’re so used to thinking ourselves as unique. And this would show we’re not unique in the universe, it’ll make a big difference to all of us, I think. And I’m sure that will happen at some point.

Akshay Kapur:

Right? Absolutely. Well, it’s good to know that there’s no need for the Men in Black in in the near future (laughs). I would like to follow up with a quick question again. When we’re talking about astronomy in the in the popular media today. And that’s the subject or the sore object, depending on which way you stand on the spectrum of Pluto. Being a planet not being a planet, being a planet, not being a planet? Where do you stand on this whole debate? What are your thoughts on Pluto being demoted from its planetary status?

Jayant Murthy:

Well, as again, this is something that I learnt in school well I don’t like to change things that I learnt in school. I think it’s the whole decision was not really done well. don’t know if we’re going to go back from that story but they came up with a definition deliberately so that Pluto wouldn’t be on planet. And, you know, I figured we got seven oceans and whatever it is six continents. What makes Europe a continent? It’s just a little extrusion off of Asia. So, you call Pluto a planet, what harm does it do anyone?

Akshay Kapur:

Right. Yes, I love the metaphor that you’re using to exemplify this point. (laughs). As we come to the end of our conversation, what is a takeaway that you would like to share with our listeners, who may be interested in perhaps following your footsteps in the field of astronomical discovery?

Jayant Murthy:

What I find is that there are of course, many pressures on people from various sources from parents, it could be financial, whatever it is. But I would say that for the people who can afford to do so, I think it’s a good thing to at least try starting out in academics, get your master’s degree, try to go in for a PhD degree. If again, I understand that not everyone has the ability to do that, there are so many other pressures. But if you can spend, let’s say, four years on a PhD, it’s time that you get to do what you want. You have your learning about the world around you, you’re doing something that you’re passionate about, you’re getting paid to do that. And I think that’s a great opportunity. After that, you may find that you’re not so interested in it, you may find other things that you’re more interested in. That’s all fine. It’s all great. But at least you’ll have these few years where you’re exploring your passions and I think that that is a great thing about universities. I think it’s a great thing about academics. I think it lets you have that time.

Akshay Kapur:

Right. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much for taking the time to join us here on the go beyond podcast, Professor Murthy. It’s a true pleasure to have been in conversation with you and I hope we get a chance to speak again very soon.

Jayant Murthy:

Thank you.