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UofL's DOWLING EXPLAINS JUPITER'S SWIRLING STORMS ON DISCOVERY SHOW By TOM DORSEY, The Courier-Journal, Louisville   Forget those TV storm teams and other tube weather trackers. The University of Louisville's Tim Dowling is on the trail of some really big boomers -- hundreds of millions of miles from Louisville.
Dowling, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UofL's Speed Scientific School, is a student of the universe. Among other things, he's studying the lightning storms on Jupiter that he'll talk about on Discovery Channel's "Planet Storm" Sunday night at 8. Dowling is an expert on planetary gases and atmospheres and is involved in several studies, including a comparison of the atmospheres of Venus and Titan. He is one of several professors at U of L involved in space research. Associate Professor Tim Dowling appears Sunday on "Planet Storm." He's especially interested in the mammoth, 300-mph storm swirling near Jupiter's big, bloodshot red eye. Jupiter's colossal storms could swallow the Earth -- but understanding them may help us cope with severe weather in Kansas or Kentucky.Jupiter's lightning strikes are 100 times more powerful than anything ever seen on Earth. To demonstrate their fury, "Planet Storm" takes viewers on a fantasy airplane ride through one of the violent blowouts that comes off like a disaster movie. Dowling's chief studies are a bit more academic. His expertise is in computational fluid dynamics, atmospheric dynamics, thermodynamics, vorticity and parallel computing. All of that can help build a better refrigerator or predict local rainfall more accurately. One of his goals is to establish a center for planetary science at U of L. "There's a huge demand for it now," he says. Dowling, 38, is a poster boy for the kind of bright young scientist and teacher U of L wants to attract. He majored in physics and math at the University of Virginia and has a Ph.D. in planetary science from the California Institute of Technology. He also spent seven years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. How did he wind up in Kentucky? "I married into Louisville," he says. In 1993 he came here to visit a former college roommate who was working with Beth Bradley, an associate professor of math at U of L. She had "the nicest legs I've ever seen," he says. Dowling ditched his roomie and took her on a date. They eventually married and settled in Louisville, and now have two children, Nicole, 3, and Rebecca, 6 months. The former resident of Connecticut, California, Virginia and Massachusetts is a convert. "Louisville has tons of things going for it," Dowling says. For fun, he paints a little and likes swimming -- and then there are those two little girls orbiting around his house. And, yes, he's a science-fiction fan. He loves "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Mystery Science Theater" -- but he hated "Independence Day." Mel Brooks' "Space Balls" was better, he says.
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