James J. Bock: Revealing the Cold Universe

The birth of stars, initiated by the gravitational collapse of interstellar gas clouds, is often obscured from our view by blankets of cold interstellar dust. The far-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum, wavelengths best observed from space to avoid Earth's absorbing atmosphere, is key to revealing this cold interstellar material of gas and dust, and the role it plays in forming stars and galaxies. The ESA Herschel satellite, launched in May 2009, gives us a new far-infrared view of the universe, and is providing discoveries ranging from our Milky Way to cosmologically distant ultra-luminous infrared galaxies a trillion times more powerful than our Sun. Novel low-temperature detectors developed by JPL are one of the defining technologies behind Herschel. A new revolution is now emerging - detectors based on superconductivity - driving a rapid growth in astronomical capability for future observations.

James J. Bock is Visiting Associate Professor in Physics at Caltech.