Newsbites (Page 2)

McGill: The Asteroid

	ILLUSTRATION: TZIGANE

While the Board of Governors is unlikely to designate it the University's third official campus any time soon, graduates will be pleased to hear there's a little piece of the galaxy now officially named McGill. Amateur astronomer and author David Levy, a student here in the '60s and '70s, has named one of his discoveries after the University. The celestial body in question is an asteroid that Levy and colleague Henry Holt discovered in 1990, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

"The McGill world -- and it is a world," says Levy, "is somewhere between two and five kilometres in diameter. It has an orbit and goes around the sun in about three of our years, and it has sunrises and sunsets just like we do. It's a little bit of real estate now for McGill and it's proudly bearing the name McGill as it wanders through the solar system."

The delay in naming the asteroid, Levy explains, is in part due to the fact that "after an object is discovered, it has to be observed through a full orbit around the sun, so that there's no danger that the asteroid would be lost. Then it is given a number, and after that the discoverers are given an opportunity to name it." Levy, his wife Wendee, and Carolyn Shoemaker -- who, with her late husband Eugene Shoemaker and Levy, was a discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that crashed sensationally into Jupiter in 1994 -- decided together to name it after McGill.

"I had a very good learning experience there," says Levy of his reasons for choosing to honour the University in this unusual fashion, "and my family over many generations has been affiliated with McGill. My father was a student of Stephen Leacock and has all kinds of stories about him. My mother was one of the first women medical students at the University. My nephews and nieces have been students there. So it's a family thing, really."

Levy was already keen on astronomy in his student days. In 1975, while an education student at McGill, he set up a telescope in front of the Arts Building for students to observe an eclipse of the sun. He went on to discover 21 comets, the most of any amateur astronomer on the planet. A resident of Vail, Arizona, near Tucson, Levy now has 27 books to his name, a weekly radio show, has appeared many times on television shows in the U.S. and Canada, and is part of the Shoemaker-Levy Cometograph comet search program based in Arizona.

So is there a chance the McGill asteroid might turn on us and collide with Earth the way Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter? How likely are the catastrophic scenarios we've witnessed in Hollywood blockbusters over the past few years?

"The McGill asteroid we chose very carefully," Levy assures us. "It is never going to hit the Earth. I do think within the next 100,000 years we have a 50/50 chance of an asteroid the size of McGill hitting the Earth, and that would cause global damage."

Safe for now, graduates and other earthbound creatures can stargaze knowing that somewhere out there is a minor planet named McGill.

Victorious Voice

Getting launched in the music industry is hard, to say the least. But as Stephanie Marshall, BMus'98, would certainly attest, an important award can make all the difference. A mezzo-soprano, Marshall won the prestigious Ferrier voice competition in London this past April with an impressive performance that included arias from Gounod's Faust and Xerxes by Handel. Marshall credits former McGill professor Jan Simons for helping her to reach prize-winning form. In addition to £10,000 and a solo concert date at London's Wigmore Hall, Marshall says the award has brought "a lot of interest" from agents.

Last year's winner is also a McGill grad. Gillian Keith, BMus'95, was the first Canadian to capture the Ferrier Prize, and her debut recital takes place at Wigmore Hall this month.

The two sopranos, who went on to study at the Royal Academy of Music after graduating from McGill, follow in the footsteps of an earlier winner, Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel. Can fame be far behind?

Taking One for the Team

PHOTO: Louis Archambault

The McGill men's volleyball team have an unusual take on team photos. For one, most such images involve clothing: maybe some pads, a uniform or team jersey. Not so for these athletes, who doffed their usual volleyball duds for a nude team calendar this year.

The idea began when the club-level team (with no varsity status and hence no official funding) got an important sponsorship for their volleyballs from Molten. To thank the company, the boys had a photo taken with team members appearing naked save for the new, strategically positioned volleyballs. Team vice-president Louis Archambault, BEng'03, then had a fundraising moment: how about a nude calendar to raise money for the team? He and team president Costa Lambrakis, BEd'02, organized the photo shoot. Archambault, an amateur photographer, took the photos in his apartment and spent a good deal of his own money funding the project.

"I developed the negatives and the pictures in my bathroom," says Archambault. "Not one player was against the idea. Some were more shy than others, but it didn't take much time before they got comfortable during the shoot." Archambault says he was pleased with the final photos. "It's amazing what you can do with the right lighting and a little baby oil."

The team sold 250 calendars, mostly to family and close friends, at $10 apiece. "Most of the people who saw it thought it was a great idea and found it pretty funny," says Archambault.

Team members -- including Mr. December, Adrian Fluckinger, featured here -- should be able to keep their clothes on next year. They recently received the good news that their status was bumped up to a funded varsity program. That means you may want to get a calendar now, while you still can. There are 50 left and they can be purchased by contacting Archambault at larcvb@hotmail.com.