Astronomy and Planetary Science
Professor Elena Aprile | Drs Kaixuan Ni | Luca Grandi – Dark Matter Hunters
Professor Elena Aprile and her collaborators, Drs Kaixuan Ni and Luca Grandi, join together with a worldwide consortium of scientists to design massive detectors for identifying the invisible matter that makes up the majority of our Universe. For over 100 years,...
Dr Jeremy Drake – Investigating Our Galaxy’s Largest Star Production Factories to Reveal Stellar and Planetary Origins
Star forming regions are dense complexes of young and newly forming stellar clusters, which drive the evolution of galaxies. Dr Jeremy Drake, a Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and his collaborators analyse X-ray, optical and...
Professor David Jewitt – Investigating Cosmic Snowballs
Professor David Jewitt and his team at UCLA explore the nature of comets. These fleeting visitors to our cosmic shore are important sources of information, and can help to reveal the origin and evolution of the solar system. Most recently, Professor Jewitt’s team have...
Professor Gustaaf Jacobs – Modelling Shock Waves and Particle Interactions in High-Speed Flows
Understanding how shock waves, flow dynamics and turbulence all interact and affect the distribution of particles has applications ranging from high-speed vehicles to explosions and even ocean sediment dynamics. Professor Gustaaf Jacobs at San Diego State University...
Dr Uli Klein – Supernova-accelerated Electrons to Dark Matter: A Career in Radio Astronomy
Considering we didn’t know of their existence just a century ago, our current knowledge of the structures and dynamics of galaxies is extraordinarily impressive. Among those who have enhanced our understanding of these building blocks of the Universe is Dr Uli Klein,...
Dr Simon Friederich – A Rare Universe? The Multiverse Debate Through the Lens of Philosophy
How did we get here? How could a universe with such simple physical laws have created something as complex as us? These questions are so fundamental that even after millennia, neither scientists nor philosophers have reached a universally satisfying answer. Dr Simon...
Vanessa M. Escobar | Molly E. Brown – How NASA’s Satellites Are Mapping the Way for Global Policy
NASA’s satellite technologies have provided a wealth of data about the planet, and can be tailored into usable products to support major decision makers across the world. Vanessa M. Escobar and Molly E. Brown are working to bring these data products to decision-making...
Working in Space: The Challenge for Mars and Beyond
Professor Karen Feigh and Dr Matthew Miller from the Georgia Institute of Technology examine what support will be required when astronauts need to work outside in deep space, where communication with Earth takes tens of minutes. Software engineer, Cameron Pittman,...
Dr Dan Durda – Studying the Surface of Asteroids by Investigating Powder in the Lab
Space scientist Dr Dan Durda and his team at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, are working to understand how the planets in our Solar System evolved. The team is searching for practical ways to exploit nearby asteroids, through investigating how...
Professor Setthivoine You – Hope for Humanity in the Energy Crisis: Astronomical Jets in a Lab
If we consider Earth as a closed box in which humanity has only ever lived, the second law of thermodynamics says that in the end, inevitably, the box will reach a state of maximum disorder. So, in the long run, there are two important ways in which our species might...
Pound | Kane | Martinez | Remington – Creating the Eagle Nebula Pillars in the Lab
The ‘Pillars of Creation’ is one of the most iconic images ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, but the processes that formed these colossal tendrils of the Eagle Nebula are still not entirely understood. To test emerging theories, Drs Marc Pound, Jave Kane,...
Dr Mark Giampapa – Studying Our Changing Sun by Getting to Know its Relatives
Astrophysicist Dr Mark Giampapa of the National Solar Observatory with his team from astronomical centres in the US and Europe try to understand how the magnetic activity of the Sun evolves and how it will behave in the future. The team does this by exploring the...
Dr Craig Hardgrove – Finding Water in the Moon’s Shadows
The Moon’s poles are enriched in hydrogen, a key component of water-ice, but there’s still much to learn. Dr Craig Hardgrove and his colleagues at Arizona State University are leading the Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) mission, which aims to discover how much...
Dr Melissa Morris – Refining the Theories of Planet Formation
Science and philosophy are two of the most important pillars of human civilisation. But when it comes to the important questions, is there really much difference between them? Where do we come from? What is the meaning of life? Answers to such philosophical questions...
The RAPP Center: Searching for Answers in Plasma-Astroparticle Physics
The Ruhr Astroparticle and Plasma Physics (RAPP) Center was established in 2015 by Professor Julia Tjus and her colleagues within the University Alliance Ruhr – a collaboration between the three universities of the Ruhr area: Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Technische...
Dr François Robert – Understanding the Early Solar System Through Isotopic Fingerprints
During the early stages of the solar system formation, the development of molecular organic and inorganic structures occurred through poorly documented mechanisms such as photochemistry or nuclear reactions. Directly probing such phenomena in the laboratory is almost...
Dr Romeel Davé – Putting the Universe in a Computer
Galaxy formation theorist Dr Romeel Davé and his team at the University of the Western Cape use high-performance supercomputer simulations to answer basic questions about the evolution of galaxies and our visible Universe. Humans have always been mesmerised by the...
Count Down To The Future
At the NASA Ames Research Center in California, the next generation of space biologists are working to understand the effects of long duration space flight on model organisms, and are developing ways to protect the health of future astronauts. The human body has...
Dr Robert Mutel – Creating Radio Maps of the Universe
For thousands of years, humans have been fascinated by what lies beyond our own planet. One of the ways to study the most distant objects in our universe is using radio telescopes. By studying radiation emitted in the radio band of the electromagnetic spectrum,...
Professor Jeffrey Forbes – Exploring How the Lower Atmosphere Influences Space Weather
Professor Jeffrey Forbes and his team at the University of Colorado use data from multiple satellites and global modelling to determine how terrestrial weather affects the near-Earth space environment. When we think of the weather, we think of the wind and rain and...
Professor Jim Kasting – Pinning Down the Habitable Zones of Different Stars
One of life’s greatest mysteries is whether or not we are alone in the Universe. One way to find planets that could support life is by working out whether they lie in the ‘habitable zone’ of their parent star – a distance at which liquid water might exist on the...
Dr Yukitoshi Nishimura & Dr Ying Zou – Studying the Auroras and What Makes Them Shine
Space physicists Dr Yukitoshi (Toshi) Nishimura and Dr Ying Zou, along with their colleagues at Boston University and at UCLA, study the interactions between Earth’s atmosphere and energy that flows from the solar wind to determine how the Northern Lights – and the...
Professor Darryn W. Waugh – The Polar Vortex: Meshing and Stripping the Gears of the Atmosphere
Earth’s atmosphere is composed of multiple interlocked rotating parcels of air. At the poles, rotating vortices form an important part of this system. Climate scientist Professor Darryn Waugh of Johns Hopkins University investigates how polar vortices interact with...
Dr Jekan Thangavelautham – Designing Devices for Exploring Space and Investigating Climate Change
Dr Jekan Thanga and his team at Arizona State University are developing new and sustainable solutions for low-cost space and extreme environment exploration. His team operates robots and sensor-networks for quantifying the effects of global warming on the Greenland...
Dr Bart Wakker – Using the Hubble Telescope to Investigate the Universe’s Hidden Baryons
Astronomer Dr Bart Wakker and his colleagues use the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to gather data on hidden baryonic matter and the composition of the Universe. Getting Closer to Far, Far Away From the era of Galileo and Copernicus up until now, our knowledge of...
Professor Vassilis Angelopoulos – From THEMIS to ELFIN: Exploring Near Earth Space
Dr Vassilis Angelopoulos and his colleagues at the UCLA Earth Planetary and Space Sciences Department in California study the interaction of solar radiation with the Earth’s magnetosphere using multiple NASA research satellites. Their aim is to protect our...
Dr Jian Du-Caines – Protecting the Earth by Predicting Space Weather
Atmospheric physicist Dr Jian Du-Caines at the University of Louisville and her colleagues explore the interactions between Earth’s atmosphere and near Earth space to better predict space weather that can adversely affect life on Earth. Everyone Talks About the...
The European Southern Observatory
The European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organisation that facilitates astronomy and astrophysics research. Since its creation in 1962, ESO has provided scientists with the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes in its host state of...
The Square Kilometre Array: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope
Comprising thousands of radio dishes and up to a million antennae, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world’s largest radio telescope. Referred to as the next generation of radio telescope, this instrument will be tens of times more sensitive and hundreds of...
Kimberly Kowal Arcand – Somewhere, Outside The Rainbow
NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory orbits high above the earth, beaming back images of the high-energy universe impossible to obtain from the ground. Bringing this data to the world is Kimberly Arcand, Visualisation Lead for the project. Here we go into detail on some...
Dr Tony Lui – Investigating Plasma Storms And Substorms In Our Near-Earth Backyard
Space physicist Dr Tony Lui has spent four decades increasing our understanding of the mechanisms behind the magnetic disturbances and interactions of space plasma surrounding our home planet. Plasma, a ubiquitous state of matter In the calm and comfort of a...
Dark Is The New Black
Eighty-four percent of the matter in the universe is made of something we cannot see, cannot detect, can only guess at based on the gravitational shadows it leaves in the visible universe. Sounds crazy? Welcome to the world of dark matter, where teams of researchers...