Reaching for the stars: Abhishek Desai, Ph.D., discusses his work with neutrinos, the Ice Cube Neutrino Detector, and the collaborative nature of science
Like just about any kid, Abhishek Desai grew up in India with dreams of becoming an astronaut. While that dream didn't come true, Desai is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow studying space from Earth. His project at NASA focuses multimessenger and multiwavelength astronomy to explain processes happening inside an Active Galactic Nuclei. In this conversation with Further Together's Michael Holtz, Desai talks about coming to the United States for his education, the importance of collaboration and mentorship, the value of the NASA NPP program, and more.
Center: Goddard Space Flight Center
Abhishek Desai, Ph.D., always knew that his calling was in outer space.
“Since I was a kid, I was interested in astronomy,” Desai recalled in a recent interview for Further Together: The ORAU Podcast. “For me at the time, astronomy was just the stars. And I was interested in being an astronaut because—well, which kid isn’t? But then I figured out that being an astronaut is a dangerous business. So then I decided to stay on earth and study the stars.”
Desai is a Fellow in the NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP), where his research focuses on neutrinos, which he described as “highly elusive particles which travel large distances without interacting with anything.”
“These are particles that you can actually not detect like light,” Desai explained. “If you are looking at light from a distant galaxy or star, you can say ‘okay, we observed something.’ But with neutrinos, it’s very difficult. Just to give you a scale, there are about a trillion neutrinos passing through us right now at every second and we cannot even see them or feel them.”
One of the ways to study neutrinos is with the Ice Cube Neutrino Detector, which is located a cubic kilometer inside the ice of the South Pole.
“The Ice Cube has these light detectors inside the ice, and when the neutrino passes through the earth and through the ice, it creates some particle interactions which causes them to create this flash of light,” Desai continued. “The Ice Cube Detector picks up that flash of light, and then it says ‘okay, we found a neutrino from this particular direction.’ My job is to try to figure out if these neutrinos are coincidental with light that we can observe from NASA telescopes and see if there are distant galaxies that are emitting them, or if it’s actually our own galaxy that is emitting them. So, my work at the NPP is to study agents which are distant black holes, and then try to figure out if neutrinos are coming from them or not.”
Desai went on to discuss the enormous amount of collaboration he’s participated in since beginning his career as a scientist.
“Collaboration is the biggest element, because collaboration is the main thing that keeps us going,” he said. “The thing I like about STEM and STEM researchers is that whatever is happening in the world—because science is the most important thing for us—in the end people come together and make sure the science survives. Like these journal articles, journal publications, organization ID maintainers and stuff like that. All of these things are important because they all come together, and they make sure that the science is still alive.