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The Beauty of Science Barry Briggs

Chief IT Architect and Chief Technology Officer, IT Microsoft Corporation

bbriggs@microsoft.com

Barry Briggs is Chief Architect and CTO for Microsoft’s IT organization, serving one of the world’s largest and most influential technology companies. Among other key initiatives, he drives the Enterprise Architecture practice for MSIT as well as numerous advanced technology programs. Previously at Microsoft he led the Master Data Management initiative in MSIT which created the world’s largest Customer Data Integration (CDI) system. Prior to that he served as senior architect in the Business Process and Integration Division at Microsoft, where he helped set the technology strategy for Microsoft’s enterprise integration and business process product line. Barry’s thirty year career in the software industry includes eleven years at Lotus/IBM where he led the development of the company’s best-selling spreadsheet program and was named the company’s first Lotus Fellow

Planet Earth: the home planet, shown in one of the most famous photographs ever taken from space, or more specifically from the Apollo 17 lunar mission in 1972.

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Earth

NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.orgi

It is a striking image, affecting us on many levels simultaneously. The iridescent sphere seems suspended in space, as it in fact is. Before us we see Africa, the birthplace of the human race, from which every one of us ultimately claims ancestry. Below that great continent lies stormy Antarctica, and as our eyes drift across the image the sheer beauty of our remarkable home suddenly strikes us. But look away from the planet. There is space: black, inky, seemingly empty. But vacant it is not. In fact, space is a busy, bustling place. That we cannot see the commotion is our limitation, but the hubbub and the noise are there. Consider: the Earth, as we know, is a giant magnet. Out from the frozen South Pole stretch lines of magnetic force, just like those we see when we sprinkle iron filings around a magnet on our lab tables in school. They curve outward, pass over the Equator, and reenter the Earth in the Arctic.

Earth’s Magnetic Field

Courtesy NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agencyii

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Unlike the iron on our tables, however, the lines of force for our planet extend out thousands of miles. By deflecting and trapping harmful radiation emitted from the sun the Earth’s magnetic field saves our lives, every second of every day. Indeed, it made life on Earth possible. Let us look more closely at these lines of force. If we had eyes that could penetrate into the realm of subatomic particles, we would see amazing things. Countless high energy electrons and protons rotate around the lines; they approach one pole, they “bounce”, and then follow the line back to the opposite pole. Approaching the other pole, the same thing happens again, and the pattern is repeated. At each pole, moreover, they move rapidly and in a small radius; at the equator, their speed slows and their radius increases. What a remarkable dance is taking place, at this very moment, above our heads! Many years ago I took a graduate course at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory entitled “Space Technology,” from the renowned professor Robert Fischell (who among other things helped invent the Global Positioning System as well as the rechargeable implantable pacemaker). When in class Bob described the Earth’s magnetic field, and the remarkable amounts of activity taking place as a result of them, I recall the wonder I felt, both from understanding the physics of the near-earth environment as well as being able to picture this extraordinary motion in my mind. Years later, we did not need advanced graduate study to appreciate the beauty of the universe:

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The Pillars of Creation NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

This photo, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, has been called “The Pillars of Creation,” and it is an apt name. Look to the left of the big star at left center, and you will see what appears to be a little finger, lit up at the tip. This is a star being born. Look across the rest of the photo and you will doubtless find other such fingers, and other such juvenile stellar objects. It is, indeed, Creation. Now, fast forward a few billion years, to the time when stars die.

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This is the Eta Carinae nebula, visible in the Southern Hemisphere. We are seeing the unimaginably violent explosion of a star:

Eta Carinae Nebula NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org

A supernova such as Eta Carinae manufactures heavy elements. In the early universe, there was only hydrogen, with one proton, one neutron, and one electron. In the unspeakable pressures in a star, atomic fusion welds hydrogen into helium, releasing energy – energy that from our own sun warms us today. In a dying star, as the hydrogen runs out, helium fuses to make carbon and oxygen and iron and a host of other familiar elements.

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Every oxygen atom in the universe came from an exploding star, as did every carbon atom, as did every iron atom, and so on. That’s right – every one, including all the carbon in your body, all the oxygen you breathe. As the great American cosmologist Carl Sagan profoundly concluded, we are all made of “starstuff.” Why do I relate these three tales? Because science – all science, be it chemistry, physics, biology, cosmology, or what have you – is more than simply formulas and mathematics and dry, rote calculations. Science unlocks the secrets of the universe, and as we have found, the universe is a far more amazing place, with behaviors and laws and phenomena more unexpected, more spectacular and more stunningly beautiful than will ever be found in any science fiction movie. As humans, we have been scientists a comparatively short period of time – for only a few centuries have we investigated nature with any rigor at all. That is a very tiny amount of time considering the age of the universe is perhaps some sixteen billion years. We have only scratched the surface of science – there is so much left to discover! And the tools for discovery are improving at a miraculous pace. Only a few decades ago (in fact, when I attended university) scientific information was comparatively difficult to access: there were libraries, of course, but these required a special trip, and knowledge of the sometimes arcane classification systems. Today, however, with the global connectivity afforded by the Internet, anyone can be a scientist, and have access to the latest imagery and findings. Here, for example, is an image from Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope showing the Crab Nebula:

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WorldWide Telescope Courtesy Microsoft Corporationiii

The WorldWide Telescope, and other applications like it, both democratize science as well as turn it into a remarkable interactive experience. Anyone can be a scientist, or at least experience the wonders of science (the WWT download – which is free – contains narrated “tours,” one of which is conducted by a six-year-old boy!). As educators we are fond of saying science is a purely quantitative activity, and there is truth to that. Without rigor, without a scientific method, none of the images in this article would be possible. Yet we fail our students if we do not imbue them with the beauty, indeed the glory, of the universe around us – and show them a path that they, too, can be seekers on their own. i All NASA images from http://www.nasaimages.org . ii http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/05galapagos/logs/dec22/media/magfield_600.html iii WorldWide Telescope © Microsoft Corporation may be freely downloaded from http://www.worldwidetelescope.org