Galaxies, Faith and Science with Astronomer Fr. Richard D'Souza

The Indian astronomer from the Vatican Observatory who’s set out to answer the questions beyond the earthly realm, Fr. Richard D'Souza talks about science, faith and the journey towards his path breaking discovery about the M32p in this special episode. Navigate the tales from the world of astronomy - from comradery to discoveries.  

Join us as we discover the secrets of the universe and the life of this astronomer-priest Fr. Richard D'Souza.

Transcript

Go-Beyond Podcast – Fr. Richard D’Souza Transcript

Speakers:

AK: Akshay Kapoor

FR: Fr. Richard D’Souza

 AK: 

Welcome to the Sony Pictures Networks Go-Beyond podcast where we go beyond the surface and uncover the extraordinary. I'm your host Akshay Kapoor. Today's guest is a man who manages to walk two roads in tandem. Although if you asked him, he would probably say that It's more of a all-roads lead to Rome kind of situation, which is quite apt given the fact that Rome is currently the place he calls home. Originally from Goa, he is both a scientist with the Catholic Church and a priest with a master’s in physics and a PhD in astronomy from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

His work in galactic archaeology transcends the barriers of space and time, and he is the co- discoverer of the Galaxy M32P a sibling to our Milky Way Galaxy that was devoured by the Andromeda Galaxy nearly 2 billion years ago.

It's a distinct honor to welcome Father Richard D’Souza. Father thank you for giving us time and welcome to the Go-Beyond show.

FR: 

Thank you Akshay, for this invitation.

AK: 

Father, I think many times in life we arrive at a fork in the road and we have to make a choice and in your case, you actually manage to combine two seemingly diverging paths into one but before we talk about that, I was hoping you could take us backwards to the proverbial Big Bang. Could you tell us where it all began?

FR: 

Sure, in my schooling here in Goa, I was always fascinated by the sciences, by engineering, by new discoveries, by the latest inventions, computers. But I also at the same time was studying in a Jesuit school, run by the Society of Jesus, where I encountered the Jesuit priests. At first, I thought they were mutually exclusive, but then on further reading, I realized that many Jesuits in the past were scientists and discoverers. They discovered new countries, new continents. They even discovered new inventions and rivaled some of the biggest discoverers and inventors in their time. I said ah, here's the possibility of unifying the two and that's where it all began.

AK: 

That's fantastic. You know on one hand you were a physics student, and on the other hand you studied philosophy and theology, correct? Was there a learning curve in reconciling these different areas of interest? 

FR: 

I actually studied physics first, immediately after I joined the Jesuits. after initial few years of monastic training, you learn the depths of spirituality of both Indian and the Western traditions. I did my bachelors in Mumbai in St. Xavier’s College and then I went on to Germany to continue with my masters. That was my initial contact with physics. Then I returned back to India, to study philosophy.

I approached philosophy then from a very scientific background, in the sense that I was very much interested in the philosophy of science, how discoveries are made, and it actually helped me to re-understand many of the concepts I had learned in physics in the classroom much better.

AK: 

But did you face any personal obstacles or was there a learning curve in reconciling these two or was it instantaneous?

FR: 

Initial struggle was entry into the field. One could call that a learning curve, but I would not try to say it was a very steep learning curve which inhibited entry into the field. When I started Physics, I struggled to learn the tools to think as a physicist. That you could say is a steep learning. But the same tools which you do learn in physics are not easily translatable to perhaps philosophy and theology. They have their own ways of discovery, reasoning, that it took some time physics actually helped me to understand philosophy and theology better.

AK: 

Interesting, then how did you end up in the field of galactic archaeology?

FR: 

Yeah, that’s a big jump, So, after I finished my masters in Germany One has to do like a master’s thesis and for that I chose the field of astronomy. Astronomy is a field which has a long history, but I had not really entered into astronomy And here I found, oh I could actually take the atoms with molecules, with Newton's laws, with Einstein's laws, with the laws of electrodynamics and actually apply them to the observations one get from astronomy to understand the cause.

So, I started up with a small project which was given to me by my thesis supervisor. And from there on there was no looking back. and I think by the end of my thesis I had decided that yes, I would like to continue one day in astronomy with a doctorate.

AK: 

Wow, and could you tell us a little bit about how   the project came to you about researching galaxies and then about your discovery of the Galaxy M32P?

FR: 

Yeah, so there's a long journey from when the way I began to the discovery of this sister galaxy M32P which was destroyed. So at the end of my masters in physics. I did this small project and I went up to a professor I had heard at a seminar and he was very passionate about his work and I asked him whether he would be willing to guide me for my masters thesis.       

At that point, I knew nothing about astronomy, and I trusted his insight and he suggested  a problem in galactic astronomy. It was a very simple problem at that time, to measure the mass of a group of stars within our Galaxy which is called a globular cluster and he asked me let's try and use the laws of physics, newtons laws to measure the mass of this cluster of stars.

So that was the initial project which I started off with. I then left the sciences to do philosophy and theology, but then eight years later, when I actually came back to Germany to do my doctorate, since I had already started off in galactic astronomy with that initial project, I thought this was the best thing to go forward with, so I applied to various PhD programs. I chose a program in Munich which had accepted me and the project which they suggested to me was to study the outskirts of galaxies.And one question in astronomy is how do these stars come to be in a Galaxy as they are today? How does a Galaxy grow over time? Why is there such a massive object of a billions of stars in the universe?

And there are many theories about galactic formation. Now, one of the things is when we observe galaxies today, we can only look at its present state. but just like in the field of archaeology you would actually like to infer its past from very signs and traces within a Galaxy, a great analogy would be to look at a, a nice brand-new car. Any of us would look at a car and would be able to approximately gauge the age of a car from various external signs on the car, in a similar way, one looks at a Galaxy and one can actually be able to understand how old it is and how it came to be.

I would like to say the way we just came to discover that Andromeda ate up a large Galaxy was in precisely the same way, so let's think of this as a brand-new car which you see in the street today, and you can immediately make out the owner of the car has not even taken off the seat covers. but over time, as you notice you can see that it has a small scratch on its side and you would immediately infer, something has happened to the car. 

AK (Laughs)

FR :

imagine a few days later you see the car, the front side all smashed up. Immediately you would infer that he has had a big accident, and it has damaged the front portion. So, in the same, way we look at the Andromeda Galaxy, and by studying the deformations in the outer part we were able to infer what hit Andromeda a few billion years ago, and infer its size, the mass of it, and the time it came in, actually hit the Galaxy.

AK: 

Right I understand, and this Galaxy M32P you discovered it with Mr. Eric Bell, correct?

FR: 

Yes, Professor Eric Bell, at the University of Michigan. I was working under Eric Bell after my, doctorate in Munich and over time we made this discovery simultaneously.

So, we would talk about science, about discoveries and one day I walked into his office and I said, you know what I think we can be able to say what Andromeda ate for dinner? And we both got very excited about it and together we discovered this Galaxy and we wrote up the paper, in nature.

AK: 

Right.

AK: 

If we could just take a step back for a second and understand from you what is life like, behind the telescope? Are there any moments from outside of the lab or from other projects that you've worked on aside from M32P's discovery that stand out as exceptionally memorable?

FR: 

Uhm, so I've worked with, uh, a number of projects since I've started. It's rather difficult to judge this, It's almost your supervisor, which gives you a project and you work on that. It takes a long time for you to own that project. Once you're done with your PhD, and once you are now into the real world into the real science and you have to come up with your own ideas that's where you very quickly begin to own up projects and I think we like the things we do. So, I have to say I'm much more prouder of my projects post my PhD, partly because I came up with them myself and I owned it. I think this is called the IKEA effect. I don't know if you ever heard of the IKEA effect.

AK: 

No, I haven’t

FR: 

IKEA discovered that rather than giving people readymade furniture people value their furniture more if they built it themselves.

AK: 

Ah. OK

FR: 

we call this the IKEA effect. 

AK: 

I think that makes a lot of sense. 

FR: 

And it's a risk, right? That's the great thing about science. Every idea you come up is with a risk. It could succeed or it could fail, and 99% of the time it fails. 

AK (Laughs)

AK: 

True, as a scientist and a priest. Do you believe that the worlds of science and religion are mutually exclusive? And how do you navigate the perceived contradictions when interacting with others? 

FR:

I do not find any contradiction between the sciences. And I experienced this in my own life I know many other scientists who are religious believers. so I work with other Jesuits who are scientist, but I also work with other people who are religious leaders. One could name great names. Louis Pasture, Newton, Galileo were religious believers, so the history of science has a number of individuals within it who were very strong religious believers. Where people come to me with contradiction between science and religion, I usually try to inform them both about what religion says about the sciences and also about the stories of sciences. I actually try and tell people what the church has said itself about science and supporting the scientists and the very fact that the Vatican has a Vatican Observatory, 

AK: 

Right. Could you maybe share some examples on the convergence between science and religion and the influence they've had over each other throughout history?

FR: 

I think it's much more easier to actually talk about the influence the sciences have had on religion. Most civilization, cultures, religions tend to think that we are really at the center, and the discoveries of last few centuries starting from the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Kepler have all shown us that this is not the case, that the earth goes around the sun, the sun goes around the Galaxy. We are just one of the billion stars in our Galaxy and our Galaxy is also not the center of the universe. And this concept, has transformed how religions now talk about the cosmos and the beyond. So, in a sense, say the sciences have educated religions. 

On the perspective of the inverse, how do religion affect the sciences? That's more difficult to articulate. I'll give you 3 things. The first would be the beginning of the science in astronomy was actually started by religion. The study of astronomy was actually encouraged by the church because the church felt the need of fixing the calendar, which we had today. So that would be one incident where you know it's spurred astronomy.

The second is the incident of morals in or the application of scientific results, So science is limited as it discovers something, but it actually doesn't give you principles of how you should use your new scientific discoveries. So, think of the atomic bomb. Scientists discovered they could split the atom. They could create a huge potential energy source, but the actual principles of when you would want to use it? How would you use it? The restraints of using it, were all informed by religion, philosophy, by society. I think the same could be applied to new advances in the field of biogenetics where one asks the question. Yes, we have the power to do this, but should we do it? 

Science doesn't have those principles. Those principles are either borrowed from religion, from philosophy, or from society.

AK: 

Understandable, this is a bit of a tricky one then, has science ever challenged your faith, or even vice versa?

FR: 

Yeah, this is a tricky question, umm.. one can say by principle that science challenges my faith and my faith challenges my science but to actually articulate concrete experiences would be rather a bit more difficult, so let's start off with the easier way in which how my religion challenges me as a scientist, So, science involves taking risks, It involves coming up with new ideas. knowing that  some of these ideas may turn out to be just so rubbish, but you have to follow up these ideas,  and often I like to point out that this involves three elements.

It involves faith, hope and charity. by faith, I mean I have to critically accept the work that has gone before me. I cannot go on verifying everything that people have done down the ages. I need to accept in broad measures what they have done and science works by moving forward. So, we stand on the shoulders of the giants that preceded us. So faith, in the people who have preceded me but also faith in my collaborators, I find that I often have very little faith in collaborators. They tell me they did something; I have to verify what they did. You know it's sort of a bad trait at times, You can't verify everything  people have done and you have to take it upon faith and that's how you build up a good team in the sciences.

So, trusting people also brings out the best in them. 

FR:

The second aspect is the aspect of hope. Every time I start a new project, I am really hoping that it will succeed.

AK : Right (Laugh)

FR :  

Uh, most of our ideas 90% of the times you end up in failure and 5% of the time you succeed, but maybe, perhaps over time you are able to build up an intuition on what will succeed and what will not succeed. If you want to be successful in sciences hope is an essential aspect of being in the science of doing good science.

The last aspect which I like to talk about is the aspect of charity, of one would like to call as love and the way I like to describe this is a bit convoluted, but bear with me for a moment.

There's an understanding among many people that the science is done by lone, brilliant individuals sitting in a lab who come out with brilliant ideas. But this is far from the truth. Science actually works by interaction, by collaborations, by working in teams by contributing ideas and stimulating each other, and the better the environment, the better the stimulation, the better the newer the ideas come out and the better the collaboration.

So today in the sciences themselves there is a self-awareness that not only we have to worry about the end result, which is the scientific result, but we also have to nurture the teams within to bring about the end result. Ensuring that there are a diversity of voices people can work together very well that nobody feels threatened. The people are respected for what they are and what they bringand contribute to the table. 

AK :

That's fascinating, and speaking of faith and hope, I must ask you, do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

FR : 

I like the words you use. Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? 

AK :

(Laugh)

FR :

So, I can almost certainly say I have no evidence of extraterrestrial life. I nurture the hope that we are not alone in the universe. I do not know yet what to believe in. 

AK :

(Laughs)

FR :

Just studying the universe and seeing how small we are in the universe and also understand that life is so fragile that there are million conditions which had to come together for life to start here on our planet Earth and given that there are billions and billions of galaxies and stars within those galaxies. It's probable that there is life out there, whether they would be able to communicate to us is another question. It would be a darn waste of space.

AK :

(Laughs) I think that's a lovely way of putting it. Father Richard, in what way has studying the cosmos altered your perspectives in life?

FR : 

Yeah, umm.. one thing it gives me is fascination for the universe. I mean, so I am fascinated when I look up in the night sky. It’s just plain beautiful, the more you study it, the more you begin to marvel how beautiful it is. It's so different from how we expect it to be. 

The second thing which has altered my life is. How there is such a large place and we occupy such a small speck in the grand scheme of things, you know our problems look very small.

AK : 

(Laughs)

FR :

It gives you a sense of the enormity of space and what our problems are in proportion to those dimensions. Our problems are important, but oftentimes we tend to over exaggerate some of our problems.

And the third thing is I actually do not study extrasolar planets and how we’ve been thinking that life begins on other planets. There is a whole field in itself. I often listen to seminars in which scientists explain these concepts and from there I've understood the fragility of our own life here in space. Uhm yeah, so there are three main aspects which kind of have affected me the way I look at life. Perhaps if I would say the 4th would be the aspect of time. So, I studied the ages of the universe and the galaxies, our universe is about 13.7 billion years old.

AK :

Wow! That’s unconceivably large!

FR :

our own Sun, which was formed around 8 billion years ago, and we can more or less say that our solar system and the Earth included was formed around that time. But life as we know it is much more recent and so if you could imagine that the age of the universe was 24 hours, then life would appear just in the very last second of that 24 hours and that gives you a perspective that we talk about the enormous progress we have done in the last century. It gives you a bit of perspective, doesn't it?

AK : 

Definitely, As a researcher and a priest and as someone who, as you mentioned, having hope and having to recover from several failures, What has been one of the biggest takeaways from your journey so far?

FR : 

Yeah so, one of the things I learned, is that the process of science involves the process of learning, unlearning and learning again. Perhaps my biggest takeaway, which I learned from my own personal journey, is that often I like to compare nature to a person who is willing to reveal her secrets to you if you are willing to listen and give it time. It's like a very human way of looking at things and anthropomorphizing nature in certain sense.

AK :

(Laughs) Right 

FR: you have to get rid of your preconceived ideas and listen to what she is trying to say and often as it is known that a person will not reveal himself or herself to you on the first go and the first time you meet them, nature takes its times to reveal things to you.

AK :

Interesting

FR:

And so therefore, I think that what I'd like to draw out from this is that to be a good scientist, one really needs to have patience, patience with nature, to reveal her secrets, to you.

AK:

You know, many people may not realise that a large part of looking at the cosmos is actually peering into the past, right?

FR: 

Yes 

AK: 

Your discovery too is of an event which happened a long time ago.What are the implications of your discovery, both in the scientific community as well as you know, for the everyday individual in the way we see the universe around us?

FR: 

Yeah, so first for the discovery of M32P, which crashed into Andromeda, probably will not affect everyone. We know that the Andromeda Galaxy is coming towards us and over a sequence of time about 5 or 6 billion years in the future it will probably crash with us, with the Milky way.

AK:

Oh wow!

FR: 

Uh, in that time we would probably be long gone. That is not a real danger, our own sun will probably die by then and become a red giant. It would first increase through the size to that of the distance towards Mars swallowing up the earth and that would happen in another 4 billion years in the futureThat's the expected time frame of a star like the Sun would die, So, Andromeda crashing into us is not a great problem,

But let me talk about the implications of our discovery. So, what we realised was that Andromeda, like a Milky Way is a disk Galaxy. It was thought that galaxies which had these great big disks probably never crashed into anything else. Let’s go back to an analogy of the band new BMW, if it looks nice and smooth, they probably did not crash into anything else.

And this was the accepted wisdom at that time that disk galaxies never had any major collisions. We've challenged that conventional wisdom in the sense that we said Andromeda, our nearest neighbour which is almost as similar size has crashed into another Galaxy which was quite large. It was half the size of the Milky Way itself, but that was not very too long in the past, it was basically about 2 billion years ago and yet the disk survived, so that's challenging an accepted wisdom. Contemporary with our discovery people working on the Milky Way also discovered that our own Galaxy crashed into a little bit smaller galaxy.

This was 10 billion years ago Andromeda, which is a large merger fairly recently was a challenge to the community and it still is a challenge to the community. We still don't know why Andromeda did not continue, did not become a ball of mess like a elliptical Galaxy, round ball of mess, totally deformed, but continued to have its disk sustained and that's a challenge to us, and we are trying to understand that even more today.

AK:

Lovely 

FR:

But once we have these tools of knowing what merged in, we can then begin to ask the question. Ok what aspect of Andromeda, or what aspect of the Milky Way is caused by a merger, and what aspect is just because the Galaxy continues to be as it is and grows in a way as if nothing disturbed. So that's the big step forward we are trying to do. In the next few years is to repeat this exercise, perhaps for other galaxies, and once you have a sufficient statistical sample, you will probably be able to understand how big mergers which we know happen now, how do they actually shape the present day state of our Galaxy. 

AK:

Certainly, Uhm the next question, Father Richard is about science introduced through movies through pop culture. Do you feel that the worlds of science and science fiction are coming close to a point of convergence or will come to a convergence at some point in the future?  Or do you think science fiction is always going to be ahead of science?

FR: 

So, I think science fiction is based on imagination. it's us imagining the future, It involves the use of technology and we imagine how technology will be. We also try to imagine how our society will be in the future and you use various aspects of the sciences of astronomy, in particular to talk about. Uh, how we will go beyond how we will cross the frontiers of living on our planet. We'll be living on spaceships. visiting other planets, other systems communicating with them. All of these expressed an innate human desire to go beyond ourselves, and it's fitting for a podcast which is named or is called Go – Beyond.

AK: 

(Laughs)

FR:

Science fiction uses elements of the sciences. Often the people who actually write science fiction are scientists. Rather, my own boss, the head of the Vatican Observatory. He is an excellent scientist, but he's an avid science fiction fan. He goes, yearly for these science fiction conventions where they exchange stories, and he's fascinated by Star Trek and Star Wars and all the other science fictions you have out there. Uhm so science fiction has its basis in science but tries to go beyond. It's imagining our society in the future.

AK:

Right, right. Very fascinating. 

Lovely, I think that's a fantastic point of finality for our conversation today, so thank you so much for you know, taking the time to be here and for joining us on the Go- Beyond podcast.

FR: 

Thank you for having me, it was a great pleasure talking to you Akshay.

-ENDs-