Editor,

Your feature article on Tonga's astrophysicist Chas Egan (Origins of the univers 21Jan 2009) was quite informative, and inspirational. With all the hypes in the glorifications of famous rugby teams and players in the past year, it's refreshing to finally given a bird's-eye-view of how far a Tongan student could go in the annals of academia.

I congratulate Mr. Egan on his doctoral-learning journey doing formative research to gain more knowledge and understanding of the universe. Based on the works of giant physicists such as Isaac Newton (1642-1727; gravity, optic & light, mathematics, astrophysics, chemistry, and religion); Max Planck (1858-1947, quantum mechanics), and Albert Einstein (1879-1955, General Relativity), I'm sure Mr. Egan's contributions will be most valuable in physics to further our knowledge of earth life and the cosmos.

Mr. Egan's educational achievements will be of great inspirations to Tongan youths such as the late Dr. Langi Kavaliku and Dr. Sione Latu Kefu to my generation. The former inspired me to seek higher learning in education, and the latter inspired me to learn the art of writing.

It is unfortunate Mr. Egan will not "have Tonga as a part of my life because I will always be working on a research program within a university,"but on a smaller scale perhaps he could leave us a study of ancient Tongan navigational feats using the heavenly bodies during the 400-year rule of the "Tu'i Tonga Dynasty," in the Central West Pacific. There is a complete book on Hawaiian stars navigation, but I have not found one published on Tongan navigation.

Tongan literature and music tell of the "kaniva" (Milky Way) and the "fetu'u 'aho" (Morning Star) which can illustrate how interested ancient navigators were in the science of the universe, although it was on a smaller scale compared to modern telescopes' capabilities. But for a stone-age civilization their lives on the islands were interconnected to exploring the vast Pacific Ocean by studying the behaviors of heavenly bodies. By European-contact time, all inhabitable islands were settled, and the influence of the Tu'i Tonga was felt far and wide.

I wish Mr. Egan great success in his doctoral-learning journey. I'm sure his success will be beneficial to Tongans everywhere in the years ahead.

Sione A. Mokofisi

samokofisi [at] hotmail [dot] com