Q&A: Science writer Govert Schilling on the future of astronomy

The era of gravitational-wave astronomy arrived with a bang—or, perhaps more accurately, with a chirp . In September 2015 the LIGO–Virgo Scientific Collaboration made the first direct detection of gravitational waves , which were generated by the inspiraling and coalescence of two black holes. In October 2017, just weeks after LIGO members Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, and Kip Thorne won the Nobel Prize , researchers announced another spectacular discovery: gravitational waves and a gamma-ray burst from the merger of two neutron stars .

Science writer Govert Schilling is the author of several acclaimed books about astronomy and cosmology. His new work, Ripples in Spacetime: Einstein, Gravitational Waves, and the Future of Astronomy, could not have come at a more welcome time for readers who want to learn more about the field’s past, present, and future. In the December issue of Physics Today, Richard O’Shaughnessy calls the book a “succinct, accessible, and remarkably timely survey of gravitational-wave astronomy” and says it “conveys a sense of awe about a century of scientific investment and achievement and a sense of excitement for what’s to come.”

Physics Today recently asked Schilling about his path to science writing, the history of gravitational-wave research, and the discovery he’s most excited about seeing next.

PT: Tell us a bit about your career path. What led you to become a science writer?

SCHILLING: As a 15-year-old, I started out as an amateur astronomer. I had loved writing ever since I was in elementary school, so with this new hobby the two naturally came together. At first I mainly wrote for Dutch amateur astronomy publications, but in the 1980s I started to write news stories and features on astronomy for de Volkskrant, a large, national daily newspaper in the Netherlands. For a long time, I combined my budding career as a science writer with a job as a scriptwriter and show editor at the Amsterdam Planetarium, but since 1998 I have been fully self-employed.

Since my first Dutch book was published in 1985, I have written many dozens of popular astronomy books—not just substantive books like Ripples in Spacetime, but also coffee-table books, children’s books, yearly sky guides, et cetera. It’s very gratifying to see a number of my books translated from English into German, Chinese, and Japanese, to name just a few.

PT: Ripples in Spacetime covers the history of gravitational waves, starting with the first theories that predicted their existence. Was there anything that you found surprising or unexpected in that history?

SCHILLING: I have followed developments in the field of gravitational-wave physics on and off since the turn of the century, when the two LIGO detectors in the US were about to come on line. Even back then, I was impressed by the perseverance of scientists in their efforts to detect these tiny spacetime ripples. I just can’t imagine how excited a physicist like MIT’s Rainer Weiss must have felt with the first direct detection. It’s now 45 years since he first worked out the principles of laser interferometry.

Another thing that struck me was the emotional side of it all, with people almost physically fighting each other, like Joe Weber and Dick Garwin at a 1974 conference. Back then, Garwin and others rightly doubted the results of Weber’s first searches for gravitational waves with resonant bar detectors. Later, during the early years of LIGO’s development, tempers flared again when people couldn’t get along. Both Ron Drever, one of LIGO’s founding fathers, and Robbie Vogt, the project’s first director, were even thrown out of the collaboration. It’s just a miracle that LIGO survived at all. I guess the main message here is never give up. Physicists may be among the most persistent people on this planet.

PT: At the end of your book, you write about several ongoing projects in astronomy to build new equipment and detect new phenomena. What finding or discovery would you be most excited to write about?

SCHILLING: I am extremely excited about the prospect of detecting lower-frequency gravitational waves with the European Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), due for launch in the early 2030s. LISA will be able to detect and localize inspiraling binary black holes and binary neutron stars many months before they coalesce. Then, when their gravitational-wave frequency becomes too high for LISA to observe, it won’t be long before a next-generation ground-based detector like the Einstein Telescope in Europe or the Cosmic Explorer in the US will be able to observe their final moments. [For more on advanced gravitational-wave detectors, see Physics Today, September 2015, page 20 .] Astronomers will know in advance exactly where and when a catastrophic cosmic collision will take place, and every instrument on the planet and in space will be trained at the site of the upcoming blast. That’s just wonderful.

The other discovery I look forward to is the detection of certain polarization patterns in the cosmic microwave background that will yield information about gravitational waves generated during the first minute fraction of a second after the Big Bang. It would be our first real probe of the very origin of the universe.

PT: What advice would you give an aspiring young science writer?

SCHILLING: First and foremost, as I said before about physicists: Never give up. If you’re passionate about a particular field of science, hardly anything can be more satisfying than conveying that passion to others. It’s a tough market, though, and it can be hard to get yourself a proper job in the field or to get a living out of self-employed writing. Become a member of a local or national science writers association to share and exchange experiences. Go meet colleagues, editors, and publishers. Make yourself known. And above all, read consciously. I myself have learned a lot from monitoring why exactly I couldn’t put down some stories or books and why I had trouble working my way through others.

PT: What is your current project?

SCHILLING: I am working on two coffee-table books, one on constellations and one on galaxies. They will contain much less text than Ripples in Spacetime, and they are aimed at a much broader audience. But to me, researching and selecting photos and graphics for such a project is almost as much fun as writing. I’m also thinking about a new book that’s more in line with Ripples—a wrap-up of an exciting astrophysical topic, focusing on the latest developments and future prospects. And no, I’m not yet revealing what that topic is going to be.

PT: What are you reading right now?

SCHILLING: I finally picked up Richard Dawkins’s 2009 book, The Greatest Show on Earth. I have little background knowledge of evolutionary biology, but the story of the development of life on Earth is almost as fascinating as the history of the universe as a whole. If, for some funny reason, I couldn’t write about astronomy anymore, I would switch to paleoanthropology. I guess I’m just hooked on fields of science that have really big stories to tell, despite necessarily relying on very limited data.