At the age of 50, the name Nuno Peisinho, an astrophysicist, is written in the sky in the form of an asteroid, on Earth his work roams on scholarships and fixed-term contracts, and despite the difficulties, he does not give up science. …
“I’ve thought about giving up a few times, but I really like it, I’m good at what I do,” says Luce, a researcher at the University of Coimbra and the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences and former president of the Association of Science Fellows. research.
A Portuguese astrophysicist was in the news this week for what he named an asteroid discovered on September 16, 1998, during an observation campaign at Lowell Observatory in the United States.
Previously designated (40210) 1998 SL56, the asteroid was renamed (40210) Peixinho by a decision released Monday by the International Astronomical Union’s Small Body Nomenclature Working Group, an organization led by an astronomer also Portuguese. , Teresa Lago. The proposal to name the asteroid came from the North American Observatory.
Peixinho is a rocky body that belongs to the Asteroid Belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and revolves around the Sun at an average distance three times greater than the distance separating the Sun and Earth, completing a full revolution in about 5.3 seconds. years.
Nuno Peisinho specializes in the physical and chemical characteristics of small bodies in the solar system, such as asteroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects (ice bodies that revolve around the Sun at an average distance greater than the distance of Neptune).
Through his work, focused primarily on observing and studying trans-Neptunian objects, he traveled to the Canary Islands and the Sierra Nevada in Spain, as well as Hawaii, the United States and Chile to observe these bodies through telescopes and “perceive “How they work” in terms of light.
“It’s fantastic to try to figure out how everything works and why,” he stresses, arguing for the most dubious that his work could allow us to understand how the solar system was formed or how life on Earth came to be.
The future is “in space,” he says, and one day “humanity will have to find an alternative” to survive, “on another planet or in a city in space,” because the Earth is not eternal, even if its end is far away. , is predicted in manuals for billions of years.
In a romantic sense, Nuno Peixinho’s works are few and they can even be boring and cause sleepless nights, as he admits: instead of looking at the sky through the lens of a telescope, a person looks into a computer to which an image was sent; the sky was taken with a digital telescope camera, a clock at a time, whole nights.
Without the prospect of a stable life to which he had long been accustomed, the scientist did not start a family, he rented a house instead of buying, he conducted research intermittently.
“Nobody dares to do big projects, I don’t know where I’ll be in three years,” says a Portuguese delegate to the Users Committee of the European Southern Observatory, which operates one of the largest telescopes in the world.
A researcher with a scholarship or a fixed-term contract may “not get a penny for months” while waiting for the results of a new competition in which they “invest very seriously” at the expense of the “pace” of scientific work being done. Once, which is a “very competitive” process.
“But in fact, I like it so much, and in the midst of difficulties, we managed to survive,” – he suggests, confirming his taste for scientific research.
“Those were years and years, and now it is absurd to do something else, so what? This is a different world, it means a radical change, it means a second life, starting from scratch, ”justifies the astrophysicist.
His precarious earnings in science were based on scholarships and fixed-term contracts.
He still teaches at the University of Coimbra undergraduates in the Department of Planetary Sciences, but for free. An example of “scholarly volunteering” is expressed by Nuno Peisinho, who recently became a member of the regional coordinating center of the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof).
The astrophysicist puts his hand on his shoulder: in Portugal, research is mainly carried out by fellows and contractors. “The scientific career is practically dead, there are no open competitions, only a teaching career,” he laments, adding that universities that unite research centers are “themselves underfunded.”
According to Nuno Peisinho, the Science and Technology Foundation, the main government agency that subsidizes research in Portugal through scholarships and fixed-term contracts, “is a temporary employment agency in the country.”
“He pays scholarships and temporary contracts, and there are no duties or fees in higher education institutions,” he criticizes, defending a “career integration program,” with a schedule of competitions and job openings.
An asteroid like the one named after him “could have been in the same place for millions of years.” Nuno Peixinho persists in a place he calls his own, a scientist. “Those who like it have to go all the way. I only give up when it’s not worth it, and this is the part I haven’t discovered yet. ”
