Osten explains that students do not have to be astronomy or physics concentrators to get a job working at the CfA. "A friend of mine ended up working at the CfA after taking Science A-17...and he's a social studies major!"

Engineering

In addition to theoretical and appliedresearch, the facility at 60 Garden Street is alsoa site for astrophysical engineering.

When scientists Richard L. Nicoll and EduardoR. Oteiza aren't "causing trouble," they'redesigning and developing masers--a variation oflasers using microwaves--which can be used fordeep space tracking of satellites and globalpositioning systems, Nicoll says.

The maser lab at the CfA is one of only threein the world, and "we make the most here," saysNicoll. NASA is currently commissioning the lab todesign masers which will be used in space in 1997.

In the high energy physics division of the CfA,physicist Suzanne E. Romaine is working on aproject to develop high quality lenses for thesuccessor to the NASA satellite "Einstein."

The original Einstein satellite, which waslaunched in the '70s, contained CfA-engineeredinstruments allowing it to produce the firstfocused images of X-ray sources in space.

Research Discoveries

Not surprisingly, the CfA is mainly devoted toresearch, where it has made many significantdiscoveries.

For example, a joint effort between CfAscientists and a group in Chile has recently shownthat the universe may be more than five billionyears younger than the previously acceptedestimate of 20 billion.

Using a process that involves observing theearly stages of supernova explosions, Professor ofAstronomy Robert P. Kirshner and fellow researcherBrian P. Schmidt were able to develop a "customyardstick" to measure the age of the universe.

Meanwhile, Professors of Astronomy Margaret J.Geller and John P. Huchra are measuring thespectra and velocity of distant galaxies at theWhipple Observatory. The pair plans to create athree-dimensional map of galaxy distributionacross the universe. Their unexpected resultsindicate that the universe is made up of giantbubble-like voids, whose boundaries are wheregalaxies reside.

"It may make more physical sense to regard thevoids [as opposed to the galaxies] as thefundamental large-scale structures of theuniverse," the scientists say.

More recently, CfA researchers discoveredcompelling evidence for the existence of blackholes. The research team of Professor of AstronomyJames M. Moran, also a senior scientist at theCenter, worked with scientists from Japan toanalyze the data coming from 10 radio telescopes.

The 10 radio telescopes are scattered acrosshalf the world, and make up a network called theVery Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Using the VLBA,scientists are able to make velocity measurementsof far-away galaxies. Analysis of the results haveindicated the presence of a gravitational mass sodense it can only be a black hole.

Moran notes that the VLBA is so powerful that"if you were on the moon, we could use [it] tomeasure how fast your fingernails were growing."