UMass Magazine Online

Fall 2002

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Around the Pond

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Around the Pond

Gardens in space and other astronomical wonders




	Turners Falls High School students measure their plants' progress. (photo by Paul Franz)

As space expeditions get longer and farther out, astronauts will need to grow what they eat. To help study that problem, Mary Musgrave, associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and a biology researcher, has developed a project with the International Space Station and funded by the Massachusetts Space Consortium. High school students investigate such topics as the effects of weightlessness on plants and how astronauts recycle and purify water and air.

In April, students in Massachusetts and elsewhere used software created by UMass Amherst computer scientist Beverly Woolf to take a Web-based "tour" of a "closed loop" system, where water and air are recycled. Students then tested their knowledge by trying to grow their own fish and basil, using a computer program based on the work of Bioshelters, an Amherst company that combines aquaculture and hydroponics.

Meanwhile, two UMass Amherst astronomers are doing "forensic science on dead stars," according to post-doctoral researcher Rosa Murphy Williams. She and faculty member Q. Daniel Wang are two of the authors of a report on how exploded stars are swept back into the universe. Because research can now be done using such instruments as the Hubble Space Telescope, clearer observations can be made of neighboring galaxies. The scientists are especially interested in the distribution and evolution of heavy metals essential to human life, such as iron and calcium. Supernovae are the only known source of these elements.

In other scientific news, the large millimeter telescope designed in part at UMass has been under construction on the top of an extinct volcano in Puebla, Mexico, since 2000. This year, $10 million was earmarked for the telescope as part of a defense bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. A House-Senate conference committee must still approve the expenditure. The joint project with Mexico is aimed at producing the world’s most powerful and precise telescope.

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