Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday! 

According to Punxsutawney Phil, the “seer of all seers and the prognosticator of all prognosticators,” who saw his shadow this week and announced, in “groundhogese” of course, we are indeed halfway through winter.

For some reason, the first week of February has always been my favorite. The main reason, albeit subliminally, is the acceleration of daylight gains across the Northern Hemisphere. Another reason for my unexplained jubilance in mid-winter is perhaps my childhood memories of the Sadeh celebration, when massive bonfires lit up the skies of Tehran, along with traditional music and food. The message of the celebrations? Triumph of light over darkness. Always! Everywhere!

I have fond memories of my grade school years when I would mark my calendar with the sunrise and sunset times of each day, discovering that after the mid-winter, the daylight gains were extended faster at dusk than the sluggish morning sunrise. I became fascinated by the movements of heavenly bodies and the dynamic we now call astrophysics.

No wonder one of the all-time favorite research programs here at S&T is our Multi-messenger Astrophysics and Cosmology program, established by Dr. Marco Cavaglia, where he and his team have been listening to the universe. Yes, listening to the universe speak. In the words of Dr. Cavaglia, “we have learned that the fabric of the universe is constantly vibrating due to the continuous collisions of black holes occurring billions of light-years away. Like percussion music, advanced detectors now allow us to hear these cosmic 'drums' playing what has been called ‘Einstein’s unfinished symphony.’”

Dr. Cavaglia says that “S&T students and faculty work with thousands of scientists, engineers, computer scientists and educators around the world to make sense of space and time and their origins. They play a prominent role in the largest international collaborations dedicated to the study and detection of gravitational waves, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, as well as in the most advanced experiments probing the most mysterious component of the universe — dark energy — and the most powerful cosmic accelerators, such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory.”

Did you get all of that? If not, don’t feel alone! Many, including world-class scientists, continue to try to shed light on dark matter and dark energy to solve a fraction of the mysteries of the universe. To put things in perspective, to count all the stars in our “own” Milky Way galaxy, one needs to count for 12,000 years! To count all the stars in all 200 billion galaxies in the universe? Well, you do the math! Or listen to Dr. Cavaglia’s talk and, as a bonus, hear the universe talk right alongside him.

I remember how excited I was to discover how daylight is contracted and expanded all those years ago. And today, as I see the exciting work of our researchers here at S&T and elsewhere, it reminds me of the joy of discovery after careful observation. 

To Dr. Cavaglia and to all our researchers, I say, keep up your great work of discovery, shed light on darkness, and, in the words of our first graduate, L.R. Grabill, a century and a half ago, keep “unravelling the mysteries and solve the problems which nature lay before us.”

May light triumph over darkness and sound over silence in our moments of despair.

Warmly,

-Mo.
 
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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu