Spotlight Iowa City: Physicist finds his wavelength
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| Charlie Anderson/The Daily Iowan Craig Kletzing sits in his office in Van Allen Hall on Tuesday. Kletzing heads the NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes Project, research that involves three other universities. |
As a teenager, a love of science fiction sparked University of Iowa physics Professor Craig Kletzing’s quest for the unknown.
The black holes, time travel, and notion of an alternate reality really enticed him.
“Physics pulled me in, and I knew if anything extraordinary was going to happen in real life, it would happen through physics,” said Kletzing, 52.
Though he hasn’t traveled time (yet), he is making strides in the field.
Kletzing is the principal investigator of the NASA Radiation Belt Storm Probes Project, a mission scheduled to launch in May 2012. The UI is one of four universities that will provide self-made devices to study near-Earth radiation. This radiation can be hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites, and aircraft flying high-altitude polar routes.
“Our goal is to go back to the Earth’s radiation belt and make the best measure that’s ever been made,” said Kletzing, sitting in his office in Van Allen Hall, surrounded by his favorite science-fiction books and a framed poster of the aurora borealis.
He heads the project, but the tenured professor said such a prominent role isn’t daunting.
“Things will go wrong because nothing’s ever prefect,” said Kletzing, whose early interest in the space program was a key reason he chose a career in physics.
It’s a good thing he did.
“His work with space particles and wavelength correlation is difficult, but somehow, he figures it out,” said UI physics Professor Frederick Skiff, who is working on a project with Kletzing in California. They’re studying the wavelengths that create the aurora borealis, multicolored displays often seen in the night sky in the Northern Hemisphere.
When he’s not researching particles and wavelengths in the Earth’s atmosphere, he trades his tie and button-down shirt to play electric guitar in his rock band (and he has the long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail to look the part).
“When he’s up on stage, he lets his hair down — literally,” said Kletzing’s and bass-playing bandmate, Jeanette Welch. She said the hair “gets to flying, and he’s like his alter ego.”
Kletzing and Welch wife have taken their band, Brace for Blast, across the United States — from California, where they met, to New Hampshire, Alabama, and Iowa. Though the drummer and singer parts are often in flux, the guitarist and the bass player stay the same.
Playing their neo hard-core tunes (all original compositions) at such local venues as Gabe’s, Kletzing said being the guitarist in the band for more than 30 years has been his way of getting a break from physics.
“When I’m playing music, I’m not thinking about getting work done,” he said.
And Kletzing doesn’t plan to slow things with the band, even while planning a revolutionary space launch — which, he says, is the “biggest thing I’ve ever done.”
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