THELEAVEN.ORG | VOL. 42, NO. 35 | APRIL 23, 2021
PHOTO BY MARIE RIOUX
Dr. Christopher Shingledecker, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Benedictine College in Atchison, was part of a group of scientists who recently discovered new molecules in interstellar space.
OUT OF THIS WORLD
Benedictine professor helps discover new molecules in space “ I NEVER EXPECTED TO BE
A
TCHISON — Catholics have made their mark on scientific discoveries for centuries. Now, Dr. Christopher Shingledecker can count himself among them. An assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Benedictine College in Atchison, Shingledecker was part of a group of scientists who recently discovered new molecules in interstellar space. “I never expected to be involved in such a big discovery,” he said. “It’s really been a remarkable experience.”
An ‘unusual’ discovery Shingledecker earned his bachelor’s degree and Ph.D. at the University of Virginia.
“
By Moira Cullings moira.cullings@theleaven.org
INVOLVED IN SUCH A BIG DISCOVERY. IT’S REALLY BEEN A REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE. DR. CHRISTOPHER SHINGLEDECKER ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY AT BENEDICTINE COLLEGE
After receiving the latter in 2018, he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral research fellowship and relocated with his wife to Munich for two years. There, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which, he clarified, relates to the physics of outer space — not
to aliens. After his work wrapped up, he knew what he wanted to do next. “I always wanted to [teach] at a Catholic liberal arts college — it was my goal all throughout school,” he said. It was easy to narrow down his choices. The only one in the United States with an astronomy major is Benedictine. Shingledecker started as an assistant professor at the college last fall. For the past two years, he was also fulfilling another dream — working on the Green Bank Telescope Observations of TMC-1: Hunting Aromatic Molecules (GOTHAM) team. The group is led by Dr. Brett McGuire, assistant professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who Shingledecker has worked with over the years. “This GOTHAM project really grew out of some interesting discoveries that we were making in
a particular region of space — the molecular cloud called TMC-1,” said Shingledecker. The team’s research culminated in the discovery of a vast reservoir of new aromatic material in TMC-1, which the scientists found using the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia — the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, said Shingledecker. They detected two polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are the first molecules of this type ever specifically identified in space. Very small specific molecules containing two, three and four atoms have been detected in space for a long time, but PAHs are much more complex, and they’re what scientists have suspected were behind IR emissions for years. But IR can’t identify a specific PAH molecule, and radio can, and it’s now provided unequivocal proof that PAHs exist in space. >> See “‘STARTLING’” on page 4