The problem with Pluto

Like most of you, I spent the majority of my life being taught that there are 9 planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. We were never really taught much about the planets or how they were defined, so we sat happy in our little bubbles.

It obviously came to a shock in 2006 when scientists decided to re-classify what a planet was. But the logic behind their decision does make some sense. More massive objects have been found in the Solar System along with objects of comparable sizes and shapes. The meeting in 2006 wasn't called to demote Pluto. It was called to decide what the definition of a planet should be. These other objects could have been included and we could realistically today be looking at a Solar System with nearer 15 recognised planets. But the requirement was made such that Pluto and the other smaller bodies were re-classified as Dwarf Planets.

Credit: R. Albrecht (ESA/ESO), NASA. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap990213.html

Whilst the arguments and classification may not have been wholly accepted, it was at least based on science.

But it seems that there has been a revolution happening. When presented with the arguments, a group of people from the general public voted that Pluto should be reinstated at a meeting at Harvard University last week. It seems that many people disagree with the previous decision and want change!

But the meeting raises some interesting points. A large part of the argument to re-instate Pluto seems to come from a cultural and historical viewpoint. Pluto was considered a planet for 76 years, it seems wrong to suddenly change this. But the best thing about science is it's lack of opinion. Science is based on facts, statistics and logic. It was these tools that were used to change the status of Pluto and it's these tools that should be used for everything in science. When it was discovered that the Earth wasn't the centre of the solar system there was a huge uproar from people who believed it went against their religion, but now we look back at this and laugh (hopefully!).

So it may be that some day the definition of a planet is revisited and perhaps changed. But I just hope that this is due to scientific reasoning and not people feeling sorry for a giant piece of rock in space...

Galaxy swirls and blobs

Galaxies are like islands in the universe. They are the giant collections of stars, planets, gas, dust, black holes and the elusive Dark matter, that are dotted throughout the universe. They are often separated by millions of light years from their nearest neighbours with not much in-between. As we sit inside our galaxy, the Milky Way, it is often difficult to remember that we are just like one of those distant galaxies.

But every galaxy is unique. The Milky Way forms stars like most galaxies, contains the same things and are in general a very 'vanilla' galaxy, yet events throughout the life of the Milky Way has changed and shaped it to make it different from every other.

One of the most recognised difference between galaxies is their shape. This can be seen if you simply look at galaxies. Many of us if told to draw a galaxy would draw a big disk with spiral arms stretching out from the centre, because this is often the type of galaxy we see most in images (probably because they are the most stunning to look at). But these Spiral galaxies are not the only inhabitants of the universe. Giant spherical Elliptical galaxies with bulges of stars at the centre dominate the universe, containing the majority of all the stars. These galactic giants are very different from the beautiful spirals, both in looks and properties, on average forming much less stars and typically being much less active. Then there are Irregular shaped galaxies, those that look like no other due to their disturbed shapes. These can be elongated, squashed or take some shape that barely looks like a galaxy any more.

An elliptical galaxy.Credit:

J. Blakeslee (Washington State University

But why are there different shapes of galaxies and what causes them. Well we think it might be due to how galaxies interact with each other. It's generally accepted that Irregular galaxies are the result of merging galaxies and it's thought that Spirals in some way evolve in to Elliptical galaxies. But no one really knows how this happens and is one of the biggest mysteries is astrophysics. But as my research is trying to understand this problem, I should probably stop writing this post and get back to work!

A Spiral Galaxy. Credit: Image: European Space Agency & NASA

Wishing I was at British Science Fest

Work is still relatively quiet as some academics are making the last of the summer break, some people at work are observing at a telescope for the next couple of weeks and the students aren't back for another few weeks. But I'm stuck here doing work, like I'm supposed to (boo!).

I don't really mind, I do love my work, but this week I wish I was also somewhere else. I wish I wish I was at British science fest!

This annual science festival is one of the biggest places for all things sciencey. Over a week there are loads of great activities at the festival, based in Birmingham in the UK this year. The activities vary from talks on turning rubbish in to energy to a demonstration of how to walk on custard. The activities are generally at a level accessible by all ages and science knowledge, providing a great place for scientists and science lovers (not that they are mutually exclusive) together.

If you love science and have some spare time next year, or can pop down in the next few days, it's a really great place to go.

Check out their website for schedule and for info!
http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/british-science-festival

Meeting my great great Supervisor

It seems that one of the big things in the last few years are websites and programs about tracing your family tree. These online services allow you to enter your name and search records, such as birth and marriage certificates, and trace your family tree.
Well, there is a website (http://phdtree.org/) that take the family tree idea and puts a new edge on it. It allows scientists to trace their supervisor tree.
During your PhD, postdoc and undergraduate you will have a supervisor (essentially just your boss) who will help and advise you. Almost all scientists will have a supervisor during their academic studies, meaning that your supervisor also had a supervisor. And they had a supervisor and so on, all the way back hundreds of years. Many of the great greek philosophers were supervised/trained by other philosophers. So there is obviously an appeal to find out your supervisor family tree. Does your tree contain any famous scientists?
So I looked up my supervisor and found my academic genealogy and the results are pretty cool! A few generations back is Ernest Rutherford, who is famous for his revolutionary work in nuclear and particle physics. For example, he discovered and named the proton, one of the 3 particles that makes up an atom.
Go back a lot more layers and you reach Isaac Newton, the man famed for his work on understanding Gravity. A few levels above him is Galileo, the famous mathematician, physicists and astronomer. I could keep going back further, but the tree is so good that it's taking me some time to check every branch.
Finding out that these incredible people have passed down their knowledge and experiences through to me through a long list of supervisors gives me a very good feeling.
So if you are a scientist, go check out the website. If not, then why not pick a famous scientist and check their supervisor tree to see what other scientists are in their tree.

Scientific outreach plans

I recently decided what I want to do after my PhD, which is a career in outreach/science communication. There are so many things you can do within this. You can talk to the public about science, write for a magazine, newspaper or website, create media to explain science like podcasts of videos, etc. I'm trying to check out as many of these areas as possible to get experience and find out what kind of things I like. This has basically resulted in me trying to do so many things at the moment!

Alongside this blog and my Youtube channel, which are ongoing projects, I'm getting involved with a few other outreach things. First, I'm giving a science talk in a months time in Bristol on 'What is it like to fall in to a black hole'. I'm enjoying coming up with ideas for this as it's to the public, so I can explain it at a really beginner level without having to get in to any horrible maths. All the fun without any of the complications. I'm also trying to come up with a project that I hope to apply for funding for via the UK government. They have a scheme to fund projects that communicate what the UK space industry does to the public. I'm planning to make a sort of card game that teaches people what they do as well as teaches them about different areas of astrophysics. I have a couple of months before the deadline for this, so lots of time to think about it.


Other than that I have a few little ideas in my head, so I have lots of things to take up my spare time. I have a fun couple of months ahead I believe!

Rosettas comet conundrum

At some point in your life you've probably experienced the holiday headache. Where should we go this for our summer getaway? The south of France, Disney land Orlando, the Great Barrier Reef? Wherever you go, at least you know you will have a great time. The risks involved are pretty small.

The team behind European Space Agencies mission Rosetta aren't have such an easy task though. Rosetta made contact with the comet 67P-C/G this month. An incredible mission that will study a comet in close detail. It will hope to learn more about what comet structure and composition is as well as learning about the early solar system. It is currently orbiting around the comet, studied the outside of it. But the really exciting part of the mission will happen in November when the lander part of the mission Philae will land on the comet to study its surface.

We don't know much about the surface of comets, but what we do know is very general and is likely to vary from comet to comet. This is worrying for the team that has to land and attach Philae to the comets surface. They would like to land it somewhere stable enough for the lander to remain for the entire mission, somewhere it is unlikely to get damaged, somewhere where it can access the surface of the comet and look as deep in to the centre as possible. The amount of sunlight the lander receives is also vital, ruling out many areas of the comet already due to its spin and unusual shape. This is not your usual holiday headache of where do you go, this is a comet conundrum!

The surface of the comet has been studied for the last couple of weeks since Rosetta has been orbiting the comet and scientists will officially announce in the next week the landing site they have chosen. We will then all keep our fingers crossed for a successful landing in November for what will be an incredible feat for space exploration.

Artist impression of Philae on the surface of 67P/C-G. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

You can read more about this on the ESA website:
http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/08/21/landing-site-selection-the-race-is-on/

Science card game and Nintendo nostalgia

I was pointed to a funding opportunity by the UK government this week. They are funding projects to help the public get interested in the UK's role in space and I've decided I want to give it a go. I've been picking my brain at what to do and have come up with the idea of making a card game that teaches people about all the cool projects the UK space agency is involved in. I've not quite got the game play down yet, but I have some cool ideas. If I get it funded hopefully I can get a graphic designer to make the cards look good and help spread the word about them. I'd like to release them for free online so that people and schools can print them out and play them, enabling lots of people to be able to play. The deadline isn't for a while so I can have some time to plan. Fingers crossed!

I've also decided to relive my childhood. I have bought a Nintendo 64, a game console that was the peak of gaming in my childhood. I remember many a long afternoon round friends houses playing on games such as Goldeneye, Super Mario and Mariokart. I never had one so I'm making up for it now by buying one. It is now sat alongside my Super Nintendo and Sega Mega drive on my shelf of classic gaming. I plan to have a few nostalgic gaming evenings with friends soon, which is bound to be good fun. The addition of a couple of beers will surely make it even better!

Goleneye on the N64. http://i2.cdnds.net/12/42/300x225/gaming_goldeneye_n64_1.jpg

Long time no Blog

Yeh yeh, OK, so I've not been good with keeping up with this blog. But this will change! I really enjoy doing these blog posts, but I just need to find the time. But anyway, expect more blog posts from me as I get back in to the swing of things.

So, me update: I'm now over halfway through my PhD. Which should mean I've done half the work for my final thesis, but that's never the case. Lots of data analysis, programme creating and thesis writing left to do.

I'm now also keeping an ear to the ground to find potential jobs for the future. I fancy myself as a science communicator of some sorts, but there are so many options and opportunities. I guess that shouldn't be a bad thing...

I've also started a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/UKAstroNut) where I'm posting videos answering different scientific questions. For example, 'What is a Supermoon?', 'What is an atom?' and 'How do we discover Exoplanets?'. I'm finding this pretty fun, but also time consuming, part of the reason this blog has slowed down I suspect. Check it out if you like and maybe drop me a physicsy question you would like answered.

Anyway, I'll keep this post short and sweet. Please come back and check my blog as I promise I will nurture and care for it as I rightly should from now on!

See you guys soon!

You dirty toaster

So today I spent a lovely Cardiff afternoon indoors playing the board game of the tv show Battlestar galactica. If you don't know the tv show, or indeed the concept of the game, the idea is you each control a character on board a space ship with the remaining human population. Through the game, and the show, bad things happen to the ship and the people, such as loss of water supplies or broken weaponry. To make matter worse, one of you is an undercover Cylon, a robot disguised as a human, whose job it is to sabotage the ship and the efforts to avoid disaster on the ship.
The game in really good fun, and knowing that one of you is constantly plotting against everyone else  makes for some great debates and accusations. Crisps doughnuts and cookies may be provided to improve the quality of the game, but they are optional.
In the end, after about 4 hours of playing the humans managed to snatch victory at the dieing moments of the game (literally, our population was nearly dead by this point). Spending an afternoon playing board games may be seen as a bit of a waste by some, who would prefer to go off and see the world, but I think an afternoon spent with friends having fun is just a a good!

In to the swing of things

Finally back to work which means I am fully motivated again to do work and hitting the ground running. The Christmas break is always a nice time to charge the batteries and re-assess and think over the work you have been doing, I find.
I'm preparing a paper on the work I have done so far in my PhD, which will be my first published paper, which is a big thing for a young researcher. Hopefully it will be finished within a few months allowing me to spend the rest of my second year on a new project. I'm also working on a paper for Gaia, which takes up the rest of my time. This will be out by about April, so a busy few months ahead.
Add to this an article I have said I will write for an astronomy magazine, a meeting about a science conference I am writing, a meeting as a representative of post graduates and the eventual final of the IoP 3 minute wonder competition, Jan and Feb are going to be very busy months, but for all the good reasons.
Anyway, the papers to read on my desk is piling up quickly so I better get back to reading!

I wish it only took 10 hours...

What are the chances?

Today I found two cases of nearly unbelievable chance. By trying to avoid starting work for another couple of minutes I came across this fact. In 1864/5, Robert Lincoln, Abraham Lincolns son, was at a train station on the platform waiting for his train. The hustle and bustle of passenger on the platform accidentally knocked him down on to the train tracks.but before any harm could come to him a stranger trapped his collar and pulled him up back on to the platform. The strange part comes in when the man who saved him is found to be none other than Edwin booth, brother of Abraham Lincolns assassinated John Booth. Unbelievably unlikely to happen.
I then found that I won 5 chocolates for our office Christmas advent calendar in a row over the Christmas period. There are 7 people able to win, the names I drawn randomly and I won 5 days in a row. Pretty large odds for that to happen. Not as interesting as the one above, but still a day for statistical uncertainties!

A cinema goers perfect rainy Saturday.

Those miserable rainy Saturdays. You don't really want to go out, but sitting in front of the screen all day at home seems too lazy. Somehow sitting in front of a cinema screen is ok though, according to society. The idea of the silver screen still exists, at least to me. There's something that makes watching a film at the cinema so much better than at home, probably because I can't use my phone or my iPad while it's on so I have to give it my full attention.
Luckily thanks to unlimited film cinema cards, I did the perfect film lovers Saturday and went to back to back films. The two films, the Secret life of Walter Mitty and American Hustle, were really great. Mitty is a lovely story of a man who decided to stop his day dreaming and instead take in the real world and live his fantasies. Ben stiller in a very different but great role. American hustle offers some of the best acting you will see this year (or last year) in a great comedic story.
All in all a worthwhile trip to the pictures. Anyway, I'm writing this on my iPad instead of watching the tv that's on I front of me, so I'm going to stop being antisocial and watch the box.

A wonderful 3 minutes

Just before Christmas I was lucky enough to win the wales regional Institute Of Physics 3 minute wonder competition. This gives the chance for young researchers to present their work in a fun and interactive way but in only a few minutes. I have spent hours trying to explain what I do to friends and family so this was a bit difficult. Still I must have done well as I managed to win and book my place in the UK final! The other people who presented were really great, showing the quality of young scientists there are, who are able to present their research in an interesting and fun way.
So hopefully this year I can go to London and win the final, but if not, then I had a great time doing the presentation anyway.
If you have a spare few minutes and a pair of ears to listen to you, try explaining what you do to them in 3 minutes. Its good fun and challenges you to sum up what you do at a good level!