Father's Day at Winchester

For those who don't know, Physoc have a new outreach officer! It's me. No prizes there. If you haven't a clue who I am, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ben, I am a (recently finished) second year physics student on a four year masters course. Me and Jen will run as joint outreach officers until about October which gives her a chance to do the things she never got to finish and me a chance to learn what I'm supposed to be doing. Over summer I will be planning some exciting things for the new academic year for a variety of different audiences so hopefully get as many people involved as possible.

Now that's out of the way lets talk about the weekend. As I'm sure you were all aware (even if it was a last minute realisation and panic!) it was father's day on Sunday, so we headed to the Winchester Science Centre to run a SEPnet stand. We were joined by members of the University of Surrey, Portsmouth and many other local universities, to run a variety of different activities aimed at all ages. 

Our stand was mainly demonstrating fun things to try at home using balloons to make drinks cans move, making a CD hovercraft amongst others. This was great for getting children to start seeing how things like static electricity work although it was often a challenge to explain without giving the whole degree level understanding. If you've been to the science centre before you'll know there are hundreds of exhibits to look and play with so we had fun messing around with the wind turbine parachute men, and seeing who could achieve near jedi powers with the mind controlled ball game. 

Throughout the day there were presentations given by lectures from local universities. I sat in one of them given by Dr Brian Wink. He is a professor of psychology at Southampton Solent University, and was giving a talk titled Science, Art and Illusion. This looked at how artists are able to create depth in their pictures to trick the brain into thinking it seeing a 3D image. He also discussed optical illusions and why it is that the brain is tricked into believing what it sees. Using the techniques to understand the brain, the mystery of the Mona Lisa smile was revealed. 

Other talks throughout the day were looking at how science can be used to improve performance in sport both through perception and technology. These presentations were put on at no extra charge as part of University Week. As well as SEPnet, there were stands downstairs from other universities including Southampton, Southampton Solent, Reading, and Bournemouth. There were some showing their research, asking for participation in studies, or demonstrating what it is they have found. Aimed at younger children (although that didn't stop me having a go at everything) there were also activities like painting fossils, making soap, doing some origami, as well as a chemistry practical to make your own bouncy ball out of PVA glue.   

All in all it was a good day out, I always enjoy engaging with the public and hopefully some people will have come away having learnt something new. 

Well that's all for now, and we'll keep you posted if anything comes about. I just have to decide what to do with all this soap...

 Ben Stray

BOOK CLUB: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Welcome back after a busy year to the Physoc Outreach Book Club. We return with a look at An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, written by Chris Hadfield, former Canadian Space Agency astronaut and commander of the International Space Station.

Image from panmacmillan

Myself included, I'm fairly sure it is almost very kid's dream - at least at some point - to be an astronaut and go into space. Chris Hadfield was also among them - but he also knew how incredibly unlikely it was that it would ever happen. In the past 53 years, since Yuri Gagarin in 1961, only 543 people have ever been to space (depending on the definition used). Each year NASA picks just 8 candidates to become trainee astronauts - last year these were chosen from a list of 6100 applicants. Add to this the fact that when Hadfield decided upon his dream upon watching the moon landing as a child in 1969, Canada didn't even have a space agency (NASA only selects US citizens as astronauts), and even to those of us who know what his future would be, the chances seem pretty slim. 

Nevertheless, Hadfield thought it couldn't hurt to do everything he would need to to acheive his dream and become an astronaut. He writes "I had to imagine what an astronaut would do if he were 9 years old, then do the exact same thing... Would an astronaut eat his vegetables or have potato chips instead? Sleep in late or get up early to read a book?" He was determined to always be ready for anything. After all, even if he could never become an astronaut, at least he knew he was on a path that would take him somewhere good. 

This is one of the overarching messages of the book - keeping your intended destination is sight, because even if you don't make it, at least you'll be somewhere on the way towards it, doing something you enjoy. Hadfield talks about "attitude", which in space flight refers to the direction your vehicle is pointing relative to the Sun, Earth and other space craft, and applies the same meaning of the word to the way he lives his life, keeping check on your attitude and whether it's what you want it to be. 

Some of the messages are perhaps a little surprising to those of us who don't have the trained mind of an astronaut - for instance, always sweat the small stuff, and the power of negative thinking - as an astronaut, "What's the next thing that could kill me?" is one of the most important questions you can ask. It may sound morbid, but according to Hadfield, it keeps him very calm to focus on these small details and know that he's been over and over a hundred times and more every possible way something could go wrong - so there's less chance of allowing it to happen, and he'd know what to do if it did. I guess this is parallel to going over a job interview in your head before it happens, the possible questions you could be asked - or taking practise papers for an exam. When you think about it, negative thinking makes sense. 

One thing which I was aware of already, which Hadfield highlights, and is perhaps particularly important to remember at the moment, is how space programs bring together people from different countries and incredibly different cultures, as one country simply could not have achieved the things that we as a planet and a species have through our joint efforts. It has in the past been especially important to reviving the relationship between America and Russia. We need to remember this going into the future, and not let idiotic bureaucracy, political, cultural or social differences get in the way of our coming together as a species through science, the manifestation of our innate curiosities about the world - and the universe - around us. 

Very much worth reading, and inspirational. 

See you again soon (and apologies for getting ranty and political at the end)
Jen

Oh, and Chris Hadfield has a new book coming out in October called "You Are Here - Around the World in 92 Minutes". Exciting!

#StarSoton - International Women's Day and National Astronomy Week

National Astronomy Week this year fell on the 1-8 March, and the theme was Jupiter, as early this year is one of the best times you'll get in a while for good views of Jupiter, as it moves through its closest approach to the Earth, which comes around about once every 11-12 years. 

At the University of Southampton, we held an event here in the physics building on Saturday 8 March to celebrate both National Astronomy Week and International Women's Day, celebrating women in astronomy. 

Along with the usual attractions of roof observatory tours and mobile planetarium shows for all ages, there were three talks given throughout the night by researchers from the University of Southampton, as well as hands-on demonstrations of planetary science, and the phases of the Moon, a chance to take a look through a telescope or binoculars, as provided by myself, Sadie Jones, and SAS (Southampton Astronomical Society), and a Galaxy Zoo workshop led by Dr Jen Gupta from the University of Portsmouth. 

Photo by Duncan McBryde, PhD Student

Dr Catriona Jackman gave a talk on "Jupiter, King of the Solar System", linked to her own research, taking the audience on a tour of the giant planet Jupiter, from its famous Red Spot to its fascinating moons, enormous magnetosphere and dynamic aurora. Our knowledge of Jupiter is based on telescopic observations as well as visits by spacecraft such as Voyager, Galileo, and New Horizons. The Juno spacecraft is currently on its way to Jupiter, and we are excited for what it will find when it gets there.

Professor Malcolm Coe talked about "Tides in the Clouds", with a focus on his research studying pulsars in the SMC (Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to the Milky Way). His research is only possible because of the pioneering work of two famous female astronomers - Henrietta Swan Leavitt, responsible for the discovery of a type of star called Cepheid variables in the SMC and our ability to use them to measure the scale of galaxies and the Universe, and Jocelyn Bell Burnell, famous for discovering the first pulsar, a rapidly-spinning, extremely compact neutron star previously only speculated about. Malcolm Coe is discovering large nests of pulsars in the SMC, thought to be the result of massive tidal interactions on an intergalactic scale. 

Dr Sadie Jones then gave a talk about her PhD research into supermassive black holes and jets using radio data, including an introduction to the LOFAR radio array of telescopes, and links to important female astronomers working in the field of radio astronomy. 

Photo by Duncan McBryde, PhD Student

It was wonderful to see so many people - and so few clouds!! With the weekend being full of the feelings of looking forward to summer, we look forward to seeing lots more people at future events engaging with and enjoying physics and astronomy. Thank you to all of you who came and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!!

Jen  x (that's me below, adjusting the binoculars to try and bring the Moon back in view to say hello to its adoring fans)

Photo by Duncan McBryde, PhD Student

PS. Search #starSoton on twitter for more pictures from the evening. 

Soton Astrodome Blog: Astronomy Outreach News Update

Soton Astrodome Blog: Astronomy Outreach News Update: The astrodome school visits are managed by Dr. Sadie Jones and a team of Postgraduate and Undergraduate astronomy students. The PhD (awe...

Gaia: Mission Non-trivial

The Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics. Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Gaia is the newest space telescope, soon to be launched by the European Space Agency.

In Greek mythology, Gaia was the "great mother of all... creator and giver of birth to the Earth and all the Universe". An apt name, then, for the craft whose mission is to map our home galaxy to unprecedented levels of precision. It will pinpoint approximately a billion stars in our galaxy, precisely measuring their distances from us by using the parallax method, whereby the apparent movement of a nearby star with relation to distant background stars is measured as an angle, allowing the distance to be found by trigonometry. Simple. The accuracy with which Gaia will place stars is comparable to measuring the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 1000 km. It is able to do this because of its array of 106 CCDs (charge coupling devices). These turn the light reaching them into electrical signals, which can then be transmitted back to a computer. CCDs are the same tools that your digital camera or smartphone uses. The difference here is that there are a lot more of them; rather than one square centimetre, Gaia's array will form a focal plane of half a square metre. This gives it the capacity to collect a lot of light. It is almost a billion pixels; the Kepler mission, sent out by NASA to look at our neighbouring planets, previously held the most pixels, at 95million - about 9 or 10 times more than a decent digital camera. This isn't all; as well as measuring the ages, positions, distances, movements, and changes in brightness of its target stars, Gaia will log anything that crosses its field of view - comets, asteroids, supernovae. Scientists hope that this will generate a whole host of new discoveries, and more detailed data about objects that have previously been observed. As Gaia observes the stars it tracks at distances of about 500 lightyears, it will watch for tiny fluctuations in the position of the central brightness, as the star is pulled by the gravitational forces of orbiting planets; this could find many thousands of more Jupiter-sized exoplanets (planets outside of our Solar system). It will also be able to measure effects in light due to the gravity of very large objects; this is known as gravitational lensing. Gravity warps the fabric of space-time in such a way that as light from very distant galaxies and clusters travels past slightly closer objects, it is bent. This can help us to test key parts of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to greater levels of precision than ever before. When astronomers put forward their proposal for the mission around 20 years ago, they thought they were requesting the impossible. It may not be Mission Impossible, but there's still a way to go. Keep posted on Gaia's activities on the blog from the European Space Agency: http://blogs.esa.int/gaia/

BOOK CLUB: For The Love Of Physics

August's book club recommendation is Walter Lewin's For The Love Of Physics. Walter Lewin is a man I had buckets of respect and admiration for the first time I ever saw his lectures online on MIT's (MA Institute of Technology) open courseware website. That was back when I was studying A levels and had just decided to read Physics at university. I was given his book for Christmas by my mum, and on reading it my respect for him could only grow.


In his book, he takes you on a journey through physics. He tells the story of how one man fell in love with it, encouraging you to do the same, be it for the first time, when your eyes are initially opened to the magic of science, or allowing you to fall all over again after the frustration of exams or endless failed experiments or thesis writing has turned you bitter. The journey he takes you on is also incredibly personal, detailing what it was like to grow up in the Netherlands during the Second World War, and what his life is like now.
           I would say with confidence that I don't think any lecturer or teacher has ever been more loved and appreciated by their students. And he has so many; he has affected the lives of not just those who have been in his classes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but worldwide (including me, here in England!). This is with good reason. He is, simply the best. It is very easy to make new, ground-breaking science exciting to people, but to make the core, fundamental "boring background concepts" seem magical the way Walter Lewin does takes a real gift.
           You will be enthralled by all the little everyday things you previously took for granted. Lewin is an especial lover of rainbows and the wonders of light. I keep this book with me somewhere I can always see it, whether I'm at home or in my student house, and occasionally reread it, just to remind myself why I love what I'm doing, and what it really means to me.

I don't think I could ever urge you to read any book more

PS. Please post comments!

BOOK CLUB: The Geek Manifesto

Welcome to the launch of the Soton Physoc Outreach book club. Each month we will recommend a science-related book, starting this month with Mark Henderson's The Geek Manifesto: Why Science Matters.

         

As Henderson details in the introductory chapter, we have an opportunity to "embed critical thinking more deeply in the political process." The book seeks to suggest how we can rise to this challenge, stating that "precisely what politicians think is less important than how they think."
           In the following eight chapters, he presents his arguments for "why science matters to..." politics (voting), government (policies), the media, economics, education, justice, medicine and the environment. A true scientist, Henderson encourages us to question what we are told, and he presents strong evidence to support his arguments - references included so that you can see for yourself.
          Every page I read had me saying "Yes! You're so right! Why don't people see that?!" and if you're half as much a geek, you'll agree. One person who agreed with me is Dave Watts, who started a pledge to send every MP and Welsh Assembly Member a copy, which was carried out just over a year ago. Mark Lorch suggests sending a letter to your MP to see if they've read it and what impact is has had on them - some people have done so, and received feedback.

If you've read it, post any thoughts in the comments below. If you haven't, why are you sitting there still? Go find a copy!

Follow mark henderson on twitter @markgfh