Thinking big.

Meet Professor Miroslav Filipovic and Dr Nicholas Tothill.

For most people, knowing how to see dark matter, read ultraviolet waves or understand gamma rays isn’t something they normally need. But for a particular breed of scientist – namely astrophysicists – this knowledge is their bread and butter, just as important as grammar is to a writer or anatomy to a physician. This knowledge is part of what’s known as “multimessenger astronomy” – in other words, the ability to interpret the many different kinds of rays, waves and energy sources that reach our planet, in order to gain information about the origin and nature of the universe.

Western’s Professor Miroslav Filipovic and Dr Nicholas Tothill have, for the past five years, been collaborating on not one but two books to consolidate these disparate fields of knowledge, which have recently been published by IOP science. Both prolific authors with hundreds of published papers between them, the two books which resulted from their collaboration have already been lauded by the astrophysics community – Principles of Multimessenger Astronomy, which the pair authored, and Multimessenger Astronomy in Practice, which they both edited and contributed to. Western’s Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Payne, and Dr Ray Norris also contributed chapters to Multimessenger Astronomy in Practice.

When cosmic rays were discovered in the early 20th Century, a new chapter in our understanding of the universe was opened, and while the different known facets of multimessenger astronomy have been explored and explained exhaustively in academia, until now, there was no central volume that students, academics or astrophysicists could refer to quickly which incorporated all known aspects of multimessenger astronomy. “These books aren’t meant to explain everything about multimessenger astronomy, but for every day use, we hope it’s the book that gets pulled off the shelf and referred to every day,” explained Dr Tothill.

Covering everything from long-range astronomy to dark matter, the two volumes provide advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students with both a course text and a reference source for all the types of multimessenger astronomy currently known to science. Despite only being released in December 2021, the volumes are being enthusiastically embraced by the astrophysics community, with several universities around the world already using the books as compulsory texts for third-year and postgraduate students.

The gap in the market for these books was clear from the outset, with IOP Science keen to publish the two volumes as soon as they were presented with the idea. “They jumped at the chance to publish the book,” explained Dr Tothill, “so that part was easy. We just had to focus on writing the books.”

Drs Filipovic and Tothill edited the second volume, Multimessenger Astronomy in Practice, which they approached leading academics and astrophysicists around the world to contribute to. Astrophysicists from Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, South Africa, Argentina, Canada, France and Serbia also contributed chapters, bringing together cutting-edge knowledge on all facets of multimessenger astronomy to give students and scientists alike access to expert knowledge in the field in one volume.

One of the real strengths of the two works is the accessible style of English in which they’re written. Despite the content matter being extremely complex, the books are written in a way in which almost anyone with a basic understanding of physics can understand and learn from. Both authors are quick to credit their writing partner with the accessibility of the two books. “It’s all him,” Professor Filipovic told us, which Dr Tothill quickly countered with “He’s an excellent writer, he has a great way of explaining things” to describe his collaborator.

Despite the enthusiastic reception of the works by their peers, Professor Filipovic and Dr Tothill are in no hurry to write any more books in the foreseeable future. With full-time teaching and research loads, as well as publishing numerous other papers in the five years since work on these books commenced, both physicists are looking forward to having more time to devote to teaching, research and family. “We were finishing work, getting the kids to bed and then hiding away in our offices every night and every weekend,” explained Dr Tothill.

However, Professor Filipovic won’t get a break from writing just yet. “I’ve been invited by NASA to contribute to their whitepaper on multimessenger astronomy,” he told us, “it was really an honour to be asked.” The document will be a definitive guide on the field, with contributions from the world’s leading multimessenger astronomers.

Principles of Multimessenger Astronomy and Multimessenger Astronomy in Practice are available to purchase from the publisher, Amazon.com, Dymocks and Booktopia, and will soon be available to staff and students in the Western Sydney University library. In addition, the first chapter of each book is available to read for free, at this site and this site respectively.