Carole Mundell, astronomer: ‘Half of the known universe is at more than 1,000ºC and we don’t know why’

The British astronomer Carole Mundell, 54, has a resume that reads like a movie: an expert in supermassive black holes, a scientific advisor to the British government, president of the UK Science Council and, now, Director of Science at the European Space Agency (ESA).

This year alone, the department led by Mundell will manage more than €600 million with the aim of taking humanity to places where it has never been. Its portfolio includes plans to launch ships that will allow us to better understand solar storms, whose impact is growing; a telescope to discover Earth’s twin planets beyond our solar system, another telescope that will observe their atmospheres and make the first climate forecasts in those worlds; and a ship that will intercept a comet for the first time. They are all historic missions that push technology to the limits of what is possible.

Mundell believes that her interest in science was sparked at the age of five, when her mother gave her a dress with mathematical symbols that she instinctively wanted to decipher as if they were hieroglyphics. Physics and mathematics were the language of science, and Mundell pursued it in the 1990s to try to understand what happens when black holes “suffer indigestion.” Her work contributed to demonstrating that within every galaxy there is one of these voracious monsters that entail an enormous mystery: are they the ones who create galaxies or is it the other way around?

Mundell receives EL PAÍS at the idyllic ESAC space center in Villafranca del Castillo, on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain. It is a complex isolated from radio interference where enormous antennas rise to receive signals from ships that fly through space millions of kilometers away from Earth. Mundell is the head of the center, where she speaks with equal passion and clarity about science, politics, sexism, space exploration and scientific integrity.

Question. You was a scientific advisor to the British government during the Boris Johnson era. Do you think political leaders respect science and follow it in their decisions?

Answer. It was a very inspiring period. It was a civil servant position for the Foreign Office. My task was to use science as a tool of diplomacy and friendship with other countries, to support the government’s objectives. I also provided advice during emergencies, especially during the pandemic. We provided the facts and the politicians made the decisions. In general, our advice was listened to. At that moment we clearly saw the purpose of investing in basic science. You can’t make a vaccine overnight, it requires generations of work, and it was wonderful to share the information we had with other countries.

Science helps us flee from dogma when political positions are entrenched

Q. Is that still happening in times of Brexit, wars in Ukraine, in Gaza?

A. Times of conflict are when science diplomacy is most important, because that is when we remember who our friends are and think about the kind of world we want to build. Science helps us flee from dogma when political positions are entrenched. It is an engine of human progress and helps to make better political decisions. I had to advise on Brexit and also on other issues of security, defense, development, space and computing strategy.

Q. Let’s talk about science. What is the biggest question about the universe that can be answered by space exploration?

A. We are asking ourselves the biggest questions about the nature of the universe. How did it start, are we alone, is there life beyond our planet, what is the future of planet Earth? They are existential questions that have always haunted us. For example, we undertook the Euclid mission to study dark matter and energy, because we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating and we do not know why. Space is the only possible place to answer certain questions, such as the most powerful light in the universe produced by black holes. That we can launch telescopes into space and measure these phenomena with exquisite precision makes these great times for humanity.

Q. You talk about existential questions. Do you think we will discover that we are not alone?

A. I think we should do something more often: stop our frenetic lives for a moment and think that we live on this small blue planet, just the right distance from the Sun; that we are sentient beings who live a ridiculous fraction of the age of the cosmos, which is 13.7 billion years old. It is amazing that we are also able to conceptualize the universe, discover the mathematics that describes it, ask important questions, and develop the technology necessary to answer them. It is unique.

Q. How is the ESA going to address all the questions you mention?

A. In the next 12 years we will launch many unique missions. In 2025, Smile will be launched to study the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere. Many of your readers will have seen the amazing northern lights produced by the last solar storm and this mission will help us better understand the impacts of the next ones that will arrive. We also have two missions lined up that will lead the search for exoplanets. Plato will have 26 cameras that will work as a single eye to study planets like Earth in stars like the Sun. And then we will launch Ariel, which will allow us to study the atmosphere of 1,000 exoplanets, so we will start to be able to study what the climate is like on exoplanets, which is simply amazing. And since we have some space left, together with Ariel we will launch another probe that will remain in space for a couple of years waiting for the right moment to chase a pristine comet, ideal for understanding the origin of our solar system, and launch two small probes to study it. We also have Envision, which will study Venus in its entirety, from its atmosphere to the core. Lisa will be the first laser interferometer in history to travel to space. We are talking about three identical ships separated by 2.5 million kilometers that must detect gravitational waves in space-time, which are measured in millionths of a meter and which are produced by two supermassive black holes when they collide. In addition, we have New Athena, a mission in development that is expected to be launched in the 2030s and must solve a great mystery. We only know what 5% of the universe is made of, but 50% of that fraction is gas that is at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius, and we don’t know why. It’s an unparalleled level of space science.

Q. In 2017 you raised your voice against harassment and sexist attacks in the academic world. Do you think the problem has been resolved?

A. No, it still exists. A few days ago, the Royal Society of Astronomy of the United Kingdom published a report that makes it clear that these problems remain unresolved. Whoever you are, you have the right to work in a safe and physically and mentally healthy environment. And that’s especially true in high-pressure fields, like science. The space sector continues to be dominated by men and their masculine vision. But there are also women who lead with brilliance. Women need to look out for each other across the ladder, but it’s also crucial that men help us ensure the field becomes more open and inclusive.

Q. Until 2023 you were President of the UK Science Council, which brings together 350,000 scientists. In one of your speeches you warned about how easy it is to lose the prestige of science. Do you think that this prestige is threatened lately by fraudulent behavior such as double affiliations or citation manipulation?

A. During my presidency I wanted to start a public debate on scientific integrity and its impact on the social perception of science. Most people hold us in high regard because we have earned it by creating a robust scientific system. But this depends on each and every scientist being trustworthy. As for citations, there is no perfect system and this one in particular must be used with intelligence and common sense. One of our most successful missions is Rosetta, which made amazing discoveries and carried amazing technology. But it is a small scientific community, so the number of citations to the studies generated by Rosetta is not very large compared to other fields such as cosmology. So ESA has its own methodology for assessing the impact and quality of the science we do. We can’t blindly rely on what the numbers say, that wouldn’t be very scientific. We have to be very attentive to the integrity, credibility and verification of science. We have to assume that there will always be a fraction of cheating scientists who will try to take advantage of the system, but it is a small fraction if we remain vigilant.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition