As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, (UWI) St Au­gus­tine, the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic.

We of­fer this me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak, where our sci­en­tists, three of whom were re­cent­ly award­ed the high­est award of the na­tion—the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, will present some of their work.

This week we hear from Shirin Haque, Pro­fes­sor of As­tron­o­my and Fel­low of the Roy­al As­tro­nom­i­cal So­ci­ety, on our “Place in the Uni­verse.” She is the first woman to re­ceive the CARI­COM Sci­ence Award and the 2020 Lau­re­ate of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Award for Ex­cel­lence in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy, co-founder of the Caribbean As­tron­o­my for In­clu­sion, Di­rec­tor of the UWI-NRAO NINE Caribbean Hub for ra­dio as­tron­o­my and the CEO/ founder of the Women in Sci­ence for Hope (WISH) Foun­da­tion. Prof Haque has pro­duced sev­er­al sci­ence doc­u­men­taries, sci­ence mag­a­zines for adults and chil­dren and two tele­vi­sion se­ries.

–Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, prin­ci­pal, UWISTA

Dr Shirin Haque

Sit back and join me on the less­er-known path of how as­tron­o­my at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) has en­gaged the world and up­lift­ed our Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety. How is that even pos­si­ble, you ask?

How can one con­tribute to a field that begs big bud­gets, re­sources and large re­search groups—against one pro­fes­sion­al as­tronomer (the au­thor) at UWI?

This is all thanks to the amaz­ing bi­na­ry black hole sys­tem, with da­ta go­ing back to the 1800s, known as OJ 287.

OJ 287, which pro­vides a won­der­ful en­vi­ron­ment of in­tense con­di­tions where Ein­stein’s the­o­ry of Gen­er­al Rel­a­tiv­i­ty can be test­ed.

A team of re­searchers in Fin­land led by Prof Mau­ri Val­to­nen had their eye on this beast and mod­el­ling its be­hav­iour. In as­tron­o­my, as with many oth­er sci­en­tif­ic fields, mod­els are nev­er good enough on their own if they can­not be backed up with ob­ser­va­tion.

Fin­land is so norther­ly that, at times, OJ 287 would not be vis­i­ble at their ob­ser­va­to­ries.

The idyl­lic lo­ca­tion of T&T near the equa­tor, which gives us our trop­i­cal en­vi­ron­ments, was sud­den­ly ide­al for con­tin­u­ing ob­ser­va­tion on OJ 287, and thus, the SATU ob­ser­va­to­ry was born.

With the sup­port of vol­un­teer stu­dents and helpers, we were able to mon­i­tor OJ 287 to help un­lock the mys­ter­ies of this enig­mat­ic ob­ject. Our ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion turned out to be a boon for this project.

The pass­ing decades show the rise and fall of ar­eas with new cut­ting-edge fields emerg­ing.

To­wards the end of the 20th cen­tu­ry, a huge break­through came in as­tron­o­my with the dis­cov­ery of ex­o­plan­ets around oth­er stars. Oth­er worlds were out there, apart from the plan­ets in our so­lar sys­tem.

Is it any won­der that this gave an im­pe­tus to a fringe area in as­tron­o­my known as as­tro­bi­ol­o­gy or search­ing for oth­er life in the uni­verse?

Sure­ly, that was now be­yond the reach of T&T to con­tribute? Once again, our very nat­ur­al re­sources came to the res­cue!

Star­ry skies come to mind when you think of As­tron­o­my—cer­tain­ly not mud vol­ca­noes, or the pitch lake.

Yet, our jour­ney in­to as­tro­bi­ol­o­gy had us hik­ing to mud vol­ca­noes and sam­pling at the pitch lake to try and un­der­stand how life could arise in the harsh and tox­ic con­di­tions of these en­vi­ron­ments, act­ing as ana­logues to en­vi­ron­ments on plan­et Mars and Ti­tan, Sat­urn’s largest moon.

The work with our in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tors on these projects land­ed the sem­i­nal pa­per in the pres­ti­gious jour­nal “Sci­ence”.

All ma­jor in­ter­na­tion­al news out­lets cov­ered this work and showed how life at the mi­cro­bial lev­el could be sus­tained in the mi­cro­hab­i­tat of wa­ter droplets.

Could this hap­pen in oth­er seem­ing­ly tox­ic en­vi­ron­ments in oth­er parts of the uni­verse, which T&T had shed light on?

It was, there­fore, a won­der­ful thing when an Amer­i­can sci­en­tist con­tact­ed the au­thor, in her ca­pac­i­ty as an as­tro­bi­ol­o­gist, to com­ment on oth­er cur­rent re­lat­ed re­search in as­tro­bi­ol­o­gy.

It is cer­tain­ly not enough to be in our ivory tow­ers churn­ing pa­pers ac­ces­si­ble on­ly to ex­perts. How could we en­gage our na­tion to be part of this no­ble en­ter­prise called as­tron­o­my that kick­start­ed the Sci­en­tif­ic Rev­o­lu­tion?

As the Na­tion­al Out­reach Co­or­di­na­tor for T&T in the In­ter­na­tion­al As­tro­nom­i­cal Union, the au­thor had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to lead T&T to name in per­pe­tu­ity an ex­oworld (a star and its ex­o­plan­et).

On a clear night, with the aid of a tele­scope, a faint star in the con­stel­la­tion Leo can be seen in our skies.

Or­bit­ing that star is an ex­o­plan­et. The name of the star is “Din­go­lay”, and the ex­o­plan­et is “Ra­ma­jay”, cel­e­brat­ing T&T’s cul­ture and peo­ple. The win­ning names came from The UWI’s aca­d­e­m­ic staff mem­ber, Dr Jo-Anne Fer­reira.

But can as­tron­o­my im­prove the lives of peo­ple in our so­ci­ety, you ask? Caribbean As­tron­o­my for In­clu­sion (CAI) was re­cent­ly formed, and mem­bers are earnest­ly work­ing on bring­ing as­tron­o­my to the vi­su­al­ly im­paired by turn­ing light in­to sound and us­ing soni­fi­ca­tion.

NI­HERST is very ex­cit­ed about this project and has part­nered with CAI. The au­thor al­so re­ceived one of ten grants in the Amer­i­c­as from the Women and Girls in As­tron­o­my Project, tar­get­ing girls in chil­dren’s homes across our coun­try to build in­ter­est in As­tron­o­my and, thus, STEM ca­reers. We have recog­nised the val­ue of the calm­ing ef­fect of watch­ing stars for men­tal health and well-be­ing, which we are pro­mot­ing.

It has tru­ly been a jour­ney to the stars, but the great­est joy has been bring­ing as­tron­o­my to Earth for us in T&T!