He created, developed and directed NJIT’s Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research, which made NJIT one of the most important universities in the U.S. for observational solar physics, heliophysics, and solar-terrestrial physics.
The construction of, and scientific results from, the world’s most powerful solar telescope in Big Bear Solar Observatory. In 2017, this ground-based telescope was renamed the Goode Solar Telescope. Goode was director of BBSO from 1997, when the observatory was transferred from Caltech to NJIT, until 2013.
Sustained earthshine studies of Earth’s reflectance.
Goode conceived, designed, raised the funds for, assembled the team, and led the construction of the first facility-class, ground-based optical solar telescope built in the U.S. in a generation. Construction began in 2003 and the telescope enjoyed first light in January 2009. The telescope was renamed the Goode Solar Telescope in July 2017. More than 100 publications have used GST data since first light. The GST is an off-axis 1.6 m clear aperture telescope outfitted with three state-of-the-art spectro-polarimeters covering visible up to mid-infrared wavelengths. Under ordinary operation, the GST focal plane instrumentation is fed light corrected by the most sophisticated order adaptive optics system at any solar observatory and is providing excellent data for NJIT scientists, and to solar the community. Further, the BBSO Multi-Conjugate AO pathfinder system, named Clear, has enjoyed a series of successes. Goode was the principal investigator on all the aforementioned projects in BBSO and his current efforts are concentrated on adaptive optics.
Helioseismology
Active in helioseismology for over twenty years beginning in early 1980s. The efforts in which he was involved include the first determinations of the Sun’s internal rotation, its internal differential rotation and demonstrating that the Sun rotates on a single axis, determining the Sun’s seismic radius, and the seismic model of the solar interior, as well as limits on buried magnetic fields. In the early 1990s, he teamed to demonstrate that there is no astrophysical solution to the sun’s neutrino deficit but rather the deficit is in the province of particle physics, which was subsequently shown experimentally. Further, the seismic age of the Sun was determined and is the first confirmation of the age of the solar system from meteorite data. This team's last work in helioseismology, determined, self-consistently, that the Sun shrinks and cools by insignificant amounts as the activity cycle rises from minimum to maximum after a complex competition between thermal and magnetic effects in the Sun’s outermost layers.
Climate Science
The Earth’s climate depends critically on its reflectance. Project Earthshine led by Goode in Big Bear for nearly twenty years reported in 2001 the first modern measurement of Earth’s albedo and later the PE team reported sixteen years of terrestrial albedo variations in which the variations were precisely consistent with overlapping CERES satellite data with the same inter-annual variations. The Earth’s reflectance shows no climatologically significant trend over the period of 1998-2014.
Theoretical Nuclear Physics
His earliest work was in theoretical nuclear physics in which he concentrated on the nature of the nucleon-nucleon interaction inside a nucleus. He also explained a number of experimentally measured dynamical phenomena of nuclei, like why 56Ni decays so slowly. It is this unexpected anomaly of a doubly magic nucleus decaying that provides the energy for Type I supernovae.
Mentoring
Among 30 current and past students and postdocs Goode supervised, 15 have moved on to faculty/national center tenure track/tenured positions. Senior among them are Thomas Rimmele and Enric Pallé, as well as leaders of solar groups around the world including Peter Gallagher, Jongchul Chae, Haisheng Ji, Carsten Denker, Haimin Wang & Wenda Cao.
Leadership
In the mid-1990s, Goode founded the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at NJIT. Goode grew the NJIT solar-terrestrial program from a single faculty member to seven tenured solar-terrestrial faculty with facilities in California, South America, geospace instrumentation across Antarctica deployed across the continental ice-shelf, the Jeffer Observatory at Jenny Jump State Forrest in NJ, and automated earthshine telescopes in Big Bear and Tenerife. Most recently, CSTR is the PI institution for medium energy ring current particle instruments flying on the twin NASA Van Allen Belt Probe spacecraft. Goode was the founding director and led CSTR from 1995-2014 and BBSO from its transfer from Caltech to NJIT in 1997 to 2013. He chaired the NJIT physics department from 1984-1990 building the applied physics degree programs.
Athletics
Goode won three varsity letters in swimming at Cal-Berkeley and held multiple school records in the butterfly and medley relay in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, he competed in master’s swimming and won multiple U.S. national championships in the butterfly, individual medley and distance freestyle.
