"I Think The Coolest Black Hole Fact Is That If The Closest Black Hole To Earth Were Actively Accreting

After serving 25 years in the Air Force, as a pilot flying a variety of different airplanes, the more and more I got into different types of missions this just became a fascinating thing looking at everything NASA does with aircraft flying in and out of the earth's atmosphere.  So the opportunity to just make flight research and earth research flying a variety of science platforms was really what attracted me to the job.

What made you want to become a pilot for NASA? What’s your favorite part of this job?

“So, if the sun were just an isolated black hole with nothing around it, we would see nothing.  If we knew exactly where to look–which we would, because we’re pretty good astronomers–and we could map out the solar system, we’d know there’s something in the middle of the solar system that’s causing all of the gravity and the orbits of the planets.  If we looked right at that, we’d actually see some really cool gravitational lensing effects, and you’d see these arcs of light around the invisible black hole called the Einstein ring.”

What do *you* think is inside a black hole? Or If they sun was a black hole what would we see in the sky? Thanks!

Yeah, we had to troubleshoot problems pretty much every day.  So, we have our tasks that we’re doing every day: a science experiment or some maintenance, but things don’t always go as planned.  So that’s one of the really interesting things about science experiments is that sometimes you observe things that are different and that’s how science gets done.

One of the experiments I worked on was actually doing a chemical reaction with some small little pockets of–they’re plastic kind of tubes that contain pockets of water.  And we heated the reaction and we noticed that there were bubbles being formed.  When we did this reaction on Earth we didn’t have the same thing, so we had no idea was to expect when we did this on board.  So we documented this and actually found it to be a really interesting phenomenon.  The scientists took that back and that ended up being part of our analysis of the experiment.  

Sometimes you’re just troubleshooting equipment because things aren’t working.  So I was working on one of the vacuum furnaces one day, and it has these quick disconnects that you can use to supply power or water to the vacuum furnace.  And I tried to do one of the quick disconnects and all of a sudden the connection–the valve–stayed full open and there was water spreading everywhere.  

So that was some really quick troubleshooting, I had water going in my face and I wasn’t really sure what to do so I closed the thing as quickly as possible, backed off, got the water out of my eyes, and then I called the ground and we did a lot of troubleshooting that day.

Have you ever had to troubleshoot a problem in space?

Yeah, flying's great.  It's a completely different sensation.  You know, you can compare parts of it to things like riding a bicycle, skateboarding, surfing, things like that - even skydiving.  It's a real feeling of freedom when you're actually controlling *makes wing gestures* the aircraft flying through the air - a little bit like a bird. 

And that's an amazing privilege to have, and it's really a nice opportunity to get up there and maneuver in three dimensions - really four dimensions if you consider speed - through the earth's atmosphere.  I absolutely love it.

How does flying feel?

Mission Control is a unique environment.  The people who work there are the cream of the crop.  The tops in their graduating classes, the high performers in industry.  And so working in Mission control, my favorite thing is that I get to work with such uniquely talented people, and of all ages.  So it's a place where we can all come together, everybody with their own skill set, and solve the day's problems.

What was your favorite thing about working in Mission Control? (Also, you are the best

“So, I’m a theoretical physicist, so frankly I haven’t discovered anything in my life, but I have made a handful of predictions.  One of those having to do with black holes is-has to do with the way the light gets bent by the black hole–the extreme gravity of the black hole–so you can get light bouncing back and forth across an accretion disk due to the extreme gravity of the black hole. 

NASA is actually working right now on building a new x-ray telescope that can measure this effect, the extreme light bending by the black hole.  So hopefully in the next few years we will be able to make that discovery and prove that prediction correct.”

What is the most interesting fact that you discovered about Black Holes? And what is the one you would most want to find out?

So floating is really interesting.  You're actually very unstable when you float for the first time because your body's rotating on all these different axes, and anything you touch anything, you're inputting motion into that system.  So one of the things we learn the first week or so we get on board is how to stabilize ourselves.  

So we actually hook our feet underneath some hand rails and kind of use our toes [wiggles fingers] to keep ourselves steady.  Then--only then--when we've mastered that, we start to learn how to float in a given direction.  We learn how to push off and get to where we want to go.  It's not always perfect at first, there's a lot of times when you bump your forehead into the hatches or you slam into the wall and knock the computer off.  That's like every first time astronaut experience. But after a little while, you get pretty good at getting around the space station.  

It's a whole 'nother concept when you come back to Earth and you have to remember how to walk again.  So again, there you're kind of unsteady the first few days you're figuring out--your feet haven't touched the ground in a long time, so you have to figure out how to walk. And then you move on to how to jump, and then finally you get good enough and you can learn how to run again.

What does it feel like to float?? Do you have trouble adjusting to walking on the earth after that ??

My mother gave me the best advice I'd ever received, and it was "trust your instincts."  I've applied that when I was afraid to go away to college, and she told me, "Trust your instincts, stay at home."  

I've applied that every time I take on a new position where I'm afraid: I think I can do it, I'm not sure if I know everything that's required, but I'm pretty sure I could do it.  So trust your instincts, even though you don't have all the information, believe in yourself and you can achieve great things.

What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?

"So a black hole is just pure gravity.  In technical terms, that means that Einstein taught us that gravity is energy.  Energy is mass (E = mc2) .

Mass creates more gravity, so you get this essentially runaway effect where gravity is causing energy is causing mass is causing more gravity.

And it just pulls itself in on itself more and more and more, and you get this runaway called a singularity surrounded by an event horizon, which is the black hole."

uhmm, can you tell me what exactly a black hole is? or what iy does? thanks, just really confused and curious on how it actually works.

"So I got started working on black holes my first year in graduate school.  I actually tried another research project first about cosmology, but frankly the math was just too difficult for me, so I decided to go into easier things: black holes."

I love astrophysics and especially black holes and I want to pursue a career on them, but to be honest I'm scared to be not good enough or not clever enough. How did you decide to work on black holes? How did you become the person you are today?