Bodewits dedicated to exploring mysteries of universe one molecule at a time

Studying water and comets has become Bodewits’ forte, and the physicist has gained major acclaim and national media recognition for his examination of and discoveries related to Comet 2I/Borisov, the first interstellar comet to pass through our solar system. His research team has received considerable attention and praise in the industry, and Bodewits has had the opportunity to be involved with various initiatives during his career.

“I’ve worked on multiple space mission projects, and it’s all so amazing,” said Bodewits, who has been selected to use the world-famous Hubble Space Telescope roughly a dozen times. “You have a probe, it’s very far away and is doing exactly what you told it to do. You can’t do it in real time because it’s so far away, and it takes 10 or 20 minutes for even light to get there, so it needs to be robotic. Then, you see the first images of an object that nobody’s ever seen before, and it’s bound to be strange and is completely different than what you expected.

“We’re starting to find that all the small bodies in the solar system are leftovers of when the planets formed, and they’re all related in some way. There are ones that have more water, ones that have more dust and ones that almost became planets. How they are related is a big question, and I’m really interested in that link.”

Bodewits has a dream space exploration mission he’d love to undertake one day.

 

“We’ve been working on an idea of having a small spacecraft that would fly by two or three different objects that are at very different evolutionary stages,” he said. “One maybe that’s just come into the solar system for the first time, one that’s in the middle of its life and one at the end stage where you can no longer distinguish whether it’s a comet or an asteroid. We can really connect all of those things.

“Auburn is particularly good for that type of project because, with our interest in physics and the comets and the aerospace people who can figure out how to link all these things, it’s a planetary billiard game going from one to the next in a short timeframe. It’s a puzzle we’re trying to solve.”

Recently, Bodewits was selected as one of 14 researchers to use NASA’s Ultraviolet Transient Astronomy Satellite (ULTRASAT), which will launch in 2026. He and postdoctoral scientist John Noonan will use the wide-field telescope to study the water production rates and behaviors of comets throughout the solar system.

By using a new computer-based technique of constant observation to see the changes and differences over time that occur within the solar system, Bodewits and his colleagues hope to utilize big data produced by the high-powered telescopes to discover new and exciting things about space. He said roughly 300 comets a year cycle their way through our celestial world, and hopefully his research efforts will be able to decipher something novel and new about the heavens.

“That’s the new way of looking at astronomy, which is data-driven,” said Bodewits, who started in fusion research after earning his doctorate in 2007. “As opposed to taking one specific object and looking at it, you now capture everything in the sky and have to find out what specifically you’re interested in. For us, that would be to catch visions of all of the comets in the sky and figure out how they are evolving over time.”

Bodewits and his team, which is implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into its data synthesis process, hopes to learn how various interstellar bodies are related and how water has been distributed through the solar system.

Passion for teaching

Bodewits, an Auburn faculty member since 2018, is equally passionate about inspiring his students to explore and discover new and great things. In fact, some of his early career scientists this summer were selected to name asteroids after themselves, a special honor for the budding researchers.

Inspiring curiosity and exploration of ideas are key goals for Bodewits as an educator.

“It’s helping the students be curious and give them a sense of wonder,” he said. “There are so many interesting topics if you just know enough to be able to delve into them. Also, we try to make them think, and that’s why the astrobiology class is so much fun. It gives them a college-level introduction into atomic physics, molecular physics, chemistry, a little biology, geology and a lot of astronomy.

“It just allows them to broadly read science news, and it opens a whole world where they can put these things together.”

Bodewits addresses all aspects of the subjects he teaches, including the abstract and theoretical in a fascinating hybrid College of Sciences and Mathematics astrobiology class.

“Of course, there’s a philosophical aspect to astrobiology as well,” he said. “It’s not so much about aliens, but more about life in the universe, our place in it and what are the things you need. Where could it be? What could it look like?”

At his core, Bodewits is powered by an intense and unwavering curiosity.

“I think I am curious, and that’s where the missions and exploration come from,” he said. “But also, just having a sense of possibility that, if you think big, you can work on those big questions. Biology is, of course, about a really big question, but we can show there’s a scientific way of thinking about it.

“You don’t have to do science fiction to work on astrobiology or physics. You may not be the person who finds alien life, but this is how science works. It’s a lot of fun.”