The Blind Astrophysicist
Astronomers used to believe in something called “the music of the spheres” – they thought that planets and stars created harmonies as they traveled through the skies. These days, astronomy is mostly a matter of visual data expressed in charts and graphs. That won’t work for Wanda Diaz, an astrophysicist from Puerto Rico. She’s blind, and working on new ways to measure and represent what’s going on in outer space. Her technique may help those of us who can see, as well. Produced by Ari Epstein.
Wanda uses a graph marked with Braille tags on a pegboard to plot the intensity of light versus frequency for a spiral galaxy. She can figure out the mass of the galaxy by calculating the area under the curve.(Courtesy of Wanda Diaz)
The story you just read is available for free because thousands of listeners and readers like you generously support our nonprofit newsroom. Every day, reporters and producers at The World are hard at work bringing you human-centered news from across the globe. But we can’t do it without you: We need your support to ensure we can continue this work for another year.
Make a gift today, and you’ll get us one step closer to our goal of raising $25,000 by June 14. We need your help now more than ever!