Unearthing Our Origins

LettersUNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON COLLEGE OF LETTERS & SCIENCE&ScienceFALL 2018 UNEARTHING OUR ORIGINS 1 A road sign warning of springbok wildlife crossing is pictured along the road leading to the Southern African Large Telescope during sunrise. The astronomical facility is located in the remote desert highland of the Karoo near Sutherland, South Africa. 2 LETTERS & SCIENCE FALL 2018 PHOTO: JEFF MILLER Contents DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 02 @L&S In the quest to understand our beginnings, The Fabric of 03 From the Dean researchers have forged partnerships with 18 Our Origins colleagues in South Africa and are uncovering 04 Here & Now answers and opening new scientific frontiers. BY KELLY TYRRELL 06 Asked & Answered Integrative biology PhD student Jeremy Spool makes a discovery about loons. English and Asian American studies professor Artificial 08 Explore & Discover Leslie Bow examines the implications of high-tech FACULTY After the Violence 26 Intelligence. robots embodying female Asian features. TEACHING Return on Investment Real BY LOUISA KAMPS RESEARCH Break Through CAREER The Secret to Stereotypes. PREP SuccessWorks STUDENT Building Character The Chinese CULTURE Pieces of History humanoid robot Jiajia can interact 17 News & Notes with humans, using appropriate facial expressions 32 Life & Work and gestures. Alum George Hamel, Jr. settles Researchers also into “retirement” as the patriarch say she’s “kind, of a family-run winery. diligent and smart.” 34 Give & Transform How does a farmer’s son end up running one of the nation’s top utility companies? John Rowe attributes his success to working hard, taking chances and heeding lessons from history. 36 Sift & Winnow Atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor Dan Vimont would rather be fishing. PHOTO: IMAGINECHINA / AP IMAGES Where Inviting the public to engage with hard questions is at the heart of the humanities at UW-Madison. 28 Do the BY MARY ELLEN GABRIEL Humanities Live? 1 ORIGINS OF OUR FABRIC THE 18 LETTERS & SCIENCE FALL 2018 CHAPTER 1 THE UNIVERSE ORIGINS In the quest to understand our n the rocky, dry hills of the remote beginnings, L&S researchers Karoo of South Africa, the Khoisan in astronomy, geoscience and people native to the region tell anthropology have forged an origin story of the Milky Way. partnerships with colleagues A small girl, dancing around a fire, OF OUR in South Africa. By probing throws embers into the deep black the dawns of the universe, life sky. There they remain, a blaze of on earth and humankind, they light stretching horizon to horizon. A perpetual fire burning in the sky. are uncovering answers and The Southern African Large Telescope, or opening new scientific frontiers. ISALT, was built to gaze into these skies, from BY KELLY TYRRELL atop a plateau nearly 6,000 feet above sea level, FABRIC in the small village of Sutherland, South Africa. “The darkest skies I have ever seen are in Sutherland,” says Eric Wilcots, professor of astronomy. “You can trace the Milky Way all the way to the horizon.” This is what first brought him and others from UW–Madison to SALT—the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. Dark, clear skies are essential for a telescope designed to peer into some of the deepest reaches of our universe, and in so doing, to look back in time. “As we look at more and more distant objects, we see those objects as they were when that light was [first] emitted,” Wilcots explains. “We are listening to whispers millions of light years away.” By collecting light from objects distant and near, scientists can record the history of our own celestial origins. The more light they collect, the farther back in time they can see. Understanding the lives of galaxies SALT was optimized to study the Milky Way’s nearest neighbors, two galaxies called the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds visible only in the Southern Hemisphere. Astronomers can use these galaxies, Wilcots says, to “get a sense of both the forest and the trees” because they are “close enough we can resolve individual stars, but far enough away that we can see how the whole ecosystem of the galaxy works.” He and other scientists, like his graduate student Julie Davis, also use SALT to study the gases that swirl in and among these and other PHOTOS: JEFF MILLER 19 PHOTOS: JEFF MILLER UW-Madison galaxies. As hot gases cool and condense, Astronomical Observatory astronomer astronomy they form stars. Dying stars return gas Lisa Crause. SAAO administers SALT. professor Eric back to galaxies and seed the environment Spectrographs are like sophisticated Wilcots and SOUTH AFRICA graduate student with the materials necessary to form prisms that split white light into its com- Julie Davis take planets. Understanding how materials GREAT ponent wavelengths, from red to green to in the immensity KAROO of the Southern enter into and escape a galaxy is crucial indigo and beyond. Astronomers use this African Large to understanding a galaxy’s metabolism, Sutherland information to gain valuable insights into Telescope during and ultimately, the evolution of galaxies an object being observed—like a galaxy— Davis' first Cape Town visit to the like our own Milky Way. from its composition to its age, distance, astronomical THE SOUTHERN AFRICAN and even how its individual parts might facility. Astronomy is a path forward LARGE TELESCOPE ( SALT) be moving. Large telescopes like SALT are essentially The spectrograph on SALT was built Located in Sutherland, South Africa. “light buckets,” Wilcots says. “The Operational since 2005. in UW–Madison’s Space Astronomy bigger the telescope, the more light you Laboratory and scientists there are work- can collect.” Administered by South African ing on the telescope’s next-generation Astronomical Observatory, located SALT’s 11-by-10-meter array of hexag- in Cape Town, on behalf of the instrument. onal mirrors, 91 in all, allows astronomers SALT Foundation. to see far back into time and space by A long history of expertise Funded by the South African gathering large amounts of starlight and government and a consortium UW–Madison was invited to be involved transforming it into data. of institutions worldwide, with SALT because of its long history of The light collected by the telescope’s including UW–Madison. expertise designing and crafting astro- mirrors passes through an instrument UW contributes 16 percent of the nomical instruments. on the telescope known as a spectro- telescope’s budget annually. “We were the first place known for graph, which “is to an astronomer as a doing photoelectric photometry, a tech- scalpel is to a surgeon,” says South African nique for measuring the amount of light 20 LETTERS & SCIENCE FALL 2018 in the galaxy and quantifying starlight,” Teacher Enhancement Program to help says Wilcots. train South African teachers in the years UW–Madison astronomy professor Joel after apartheid and help contribute to the Stebbins pioneered this technique in the nation’s transformation. It brought South I have seen so 1920s and ’30s, utilizing the photoelectric African teachers to Madison for several effect, the concept for which Einstein won weeks in the summer to take science and many pictures his Nobel Prize. health courses. Stebbins helped recruit the faculty who UW–Madison also helped train one of SALT and would become leaders in developing and of South Africa’s first black astrophysicists, advancing astronomical instrumentation. Ramatholo Sefako, who studied under thought a lot Among them was Kenneth Nordsieck, Wilcots in the early 2000s. emeritus professor of the astronomy Now, local scientists like Lisa Crause about this department and the original designer of (who is working on another future the Robert Stobie Spectrograph, named spectograph for SALT), are leading the telescope. for SAAO’s former director. charge to re-shape the future of South The telescope saw its “first light” in 2005, Africa through science. The telescope has Being here is a capturing images that included a galaxy even supported a tourism industry in 30 million light years from the Milky Sutherland and boosted its economy. whole different Way. By then, UW–Madison had already For graduate student Julie Davis, begun to play a role helping train the next pursuing astronomy has meant being experience. generation of South African scientists. able to follow her dreams and collaborate with people across the world. JULIE DAVIS, astronomy graduate student Science that can change the world “There is so much human effort that Since the fall of apartheid more than two goes into this,” she says. “Hundreds decades ago, South Africa has embraced of people came together to build this astronomy as one of its scientific pillars. telescope. We are driven by curiosity. After SALT was commissioned, Regardless of the tongue we speak, UW–Madison created the Wisconsin we have a common language.” An 11-by-10-meter array of 91 hexagonal mirrors is pictured within the Southern African Large Telescope. A boy pauses on his bicycle in Sutherland, South Africa, a small town with a population of under 3,000. 21 CHAPTER 2 LIFE ON EARTH Barberton Johannesburg KAAPVALL CRATON he Makhonjwa Mountains, on the eastern edge of SOUTH AFRICA South Africa, are not particularly majestic. The highest peaks are just 6,000 feet above BARBERTON sea level. But these mountains, also known GREENSTONE BELT Tas the Barberton Greenstone Belt, happen to be among the oldest in the world. They were born on a cool and strange early Earth nearly 3.6 billion years ago. And they are Geologist Hervé one of the few places on the planet where Wabo holds a rock evidence of ancient life can be found. core sample while This is what brought UW–Madison working in the Paleomagnetic Lab professor of geoscience Clark Johnson to at the University of South Africa.

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