AD Stories: Patrick Michel on Collaboration in Astronomy

AD Stories is heading to France today where Patrick Michel leads the “Theories and Observations in Planetology” team at the Lagrange Laboratory of the Côte d’Azur Observatory in Nice. Patrick shared an anecdote with us that serves as the perfect example for international cooperation and collaboration between astronomers – an aspect that particularly fascinates him in his job and drives his passion for asteroids.

Patrick Michel

In 2008, Patrick Michel published a paper in Nature with two collaborators, Kevin Walsh and Derek Richardson, explaining how a small binary asteroid formed and why the primary one usually has an oblate spheroidal shape found in radar observations. They used radar observations of binary asteroid 1999KW4 for this study. Afterwards each one of them received a model of 1999KW4 in our mail box, sent by Steven J. Ostro, the father of asteroid radar observations. They felt very honoured that the author of the shape determination would think of sending them a model of his discovery. A few months later, Steve would die from cancer. But this little gesture demonstrated the recognition and respect astronomers have from each other, when one finds an explanation for something observed by somebody else. All working for the same cause, the improvement of knowledge. “Even if we like to compete with each other, in the end, we’re so happy when a robust explanation of some phenomenon is revealed by any of us!”

More precious than any precious element.

He also made sure to highlight the importance asteroids play in the exploration of and research on our solar system. For Patrick, there is definitely much more to them than a potential for destruction! He emphasised that some of them contain Calcium-Aluminum-rich inclusions, some of the oldest materials in the solar system. Thanks to these inclusions, we were able to date our solar systems formation at 4.567 billion years ago. Asteroids are the best tracers of our origin and the solar system’s history. “These primitive stones have a lot to say and we must both scientifically study them more, possibly exploit them, and protect us from the dangerous ones. All this needs essentially the same kind of studies/space missions, so each time we study them, we serve these three objectives!”, he concluded. To Patrick, asteroids are “more precious than any precious element”.

(Image credits: © Max Alexander / Asteroid Day)

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Read Sabinije von Gaffke’s story here.

Read Mark Boslough’s story here.

Read Rusty Schweickart’s story here.

Read Alan Fitzsimmons’s story here.

Read Mario Jurić’s story here.