NASA scientists and Vietnamese people put the national flag in Antarctica

That is Dr. Nguyen Trong Hien, a scientist from the United States Aeronautics Agency (NASA), who is working day and night with colleagues to find the answer to the question: Where does the universe originate, extremely or right? term .?

He was also the first Vietnamese to plug in and admire the red star yellow flag flying in the cold - 60 ⁰ C in Antarctica.

The way to conquer space

Dr. Nguyen Trong Hien at the 6th ' Vietnam Meeting ' held in Hanoi in early August (Photo: TienPhong)

Before going to the airport, Dr. Nguyen Trong Hien had a free time to sit and chat with us. Nearly 1 week to attend ' Meet Vietnam ' in Hanoi, his schedule is filled with reports and meetings with domestic scientists, fellows and students.

It is hard to imagine that a small Vietnamese man, wearing glasses and long hair with a thick voice of Danang sitting in front of us, is pursuing such a deep and extensive research project in Co US aerospace.

Ever since he was a middle school student in Da Nang, Hien fell in love with Physics. He read a lot of books related to Physics and Astronomy. The physicist Einstein and his works are the most sought after by him.

Hien also admired Professor, Doctor of Physics Nguyen Van Hieu, who was then President of Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. In 1981, when he was about to graduate from high school, he went to the United States to settle under his brother's guarantee.

With a lot of hard work coming to Los Angeles (California) with enough English to go to school, Hien applied to the Berkeley University School of Physics (University of California at Berkeley).

Graduating, he went on to study Ph.D. at Princeton University, majoring in cosmic background radiation research. He is the first Vietnamese to receive a PhD at this university.

Soon after, Hien went to Chicago and became a graduate student after the Doctorate (post doc) major in Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. As a special lecturer at Camegie Mellon University for a year and a half, Hien moved to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-JPL.

This NASA room in the small city of Pasadena right next to Los Angeles, as a scientist research scientist of the Astrophysics Division. He is also a member of the Cosmology Division.

Be aware that JPL has about 5,000 employees, mostly engineers and technicians, only a few are scientists.

At JPL, Dr. Hien's work is in charge of research and manufacture of equipment to capture astronomical scenes. The latest project he is working on is a telescope research project for the space observatory collaborated between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which is expected to be completed in 2007.

'My favorite is the development of the universe, especially the embryonic period, by measuring the anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation and the composition of astronomical objects when the universe has just formed. " - Dr. Hien confided.

"What I hope is to properly understand or detect the physical mechanisms in this constitutional era that occurred 10 to 15 billion years ago."

The cosmic background radiation is considered by the scientific community to be invaluable to access the universe from the beginning to 14 billion years ago.The universe in that moment was known as the ' Big Bang ' explosion.

At that time, the entire universe had only one pure electromagnetic radiation field with very high temperatures. The expansion of the universe over time has caused background radiation to cool.

Just about 3 minutes after the Big Bang, radiant energy is converted into matter in the form of elementary particles. These particles combine to form light atoms and accumulate with attractive and gradual interactions to form the universe today with stars, galaxies, black holes .

Entering the new millennium, researchers determined that the universe is almost isotropic and flat. This is a prominent feature that inflation theory predicted 20 years earlier.

According to this theory, Big Bang is when the universe is blown up from a point substance at a faster rate than light.

This pushed astronomers into a new hunt: tracing evidence of inflation in the polarization characteristics of background radiation.

Basically, the question that Dr. Hien and other NASA scientists have to answer is: Before the Big Bang, what made this universe? The universe is extremely or finite? Until now, humans only knew that the universe was originally a very hot mass and gradually expanded after the Big Bang.

Dr. Hien asserts that if the anisotropy of cosmic background radiation is measured, his group will be the first to measure because the devices made by the scientists of his group are highly accurate. Best.

It will be a solid foundation to answer the questions that humanity still keeps searching in the vast universe. He did not say when that achievement would be achieved, but it would be a 'very near future'. If successful, this will be a real revolution of the process of studying space.

Self sewing national flag plugged into the South Pole

As part of the research process, two measuring stations were installed in Antarctica. Dr. Hien has come here 3 times. For the first time he went to Antarctica in 1992. Witnessing the flags of the great powers flying in the white Antarctic sky, he couldn't help but think about his home town.

The intention to plug the yellow starred red flag next to those flags had formed in him since then. The opportunity came a year after he made his second Antarctic mission in December 1993. Before the trip, he contacted his family in Da Nang and sent him a national flag.

However, until the time of departure, he still did not receive the flag because the family was afraid that the Vietnamese extremists would cause trouble for him. Arriving in Antarctica, suddenly seeing the German flag with 3 colors of red, yellow, and black, he asked for a leaf and took 2 red and gold pieces to sew into the National flag to plug in Antarctica.

Dr. Hien only accepts to be ' one of the first Vietnamese to come to Antarctica ', but the materials we have collected so far have proved that Dr. Nguyen Trong Hien is the first Vietnamese to come to Nam. Pole and leaf the national flag on that land.

'I love my country, I love my country heroes' . Listening to Dr. Hien, he uttered that sentence to fully see the feelings of his son from his home country.

But every time he comes back to the country he also seeks an opportunity to meet General Vo Nguyen Giap, a general he admires and respects. Unfortunately, he was only able to meet the General once when he returned to Vietnam to attend the 'Vietnam Meeting' in 2004.

However, the advice of the General to his expatriates urged him more in his plan to contribute to the country's science.

He did not answer my question about his plan, but several days of interacting with scientists at ' Meeting Vietnam ', I knew that he was the most serious candidate that Prof. - PhD in Physics Tran Thanh Van aims and assigns his responsibilities to him because this year the professor is tall and weak.

Prof. Dr. Tran Thanh Van is a very famous Vietnamese scientist in France, who has made great contributions to domestic physics through organizing six ' Meetings of Vietnam ', bringing houses The world famous physics, in which many scientists won the Nobel Prize to Vietnam so that the scientific community in the country can meet, exchange and comprehend the latest achievements of the World Physics.

Currently, Dr. Hien is working very actively with the Vietnam Astronomical Society, the research lab, especially the astronomical department of the Department of Physics (Hanoi University of Education) . He is also working with scientists in The country established a training facility for students.

Unofficially announced, but a colleague of Dr. Hien said he is looking forward to the future with domestic and foreign scientists to set up a training facility for students in the country and plus joint work in a long-term research program. Among the 6 ' Meetings of Vietnam ', Dr. Hien returned to the country to attend half.

Currently, he is living happily with his wife (Da Nang fellow countryman) and 4-year-old daughter in Pasadena city. Since his death in 1999, he has returned home every year with his family and friends. 'I don't want to be far away from my family, friends and country' - Dr. Hien said.

Hai Ha