• Question: what was the best project you did?

    Asked by sarah2013xxx to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren, Stephen on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Lauren Mc Keown

      Lauren Mc Keown answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      The best project I ever did was designing a gamma – ray space telescope to look at supernova remnants (remains of the death of a star) to investigate how new elements are formed in the Universe. I did this over in Tenerife with a team of engineering, astronomy and space science students from England and Tenerife for my final year project in my degree. What I loved about this project was that I got the amazing opportunity to work with experts in the field of engineering (which I knew little about), and I also got to communicate what I knew to them. Even though we often didn’t know much about what each other was talking about, we designed a space telescope which was praised by our tutors at the end…and that really is what real world science is all about, most of the time you have to work as a team.

    • Photo: Joseph Roche

      Joseph Roche answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      At NASA I was working on a project to look at mathematical equations that are used in nature and evolution and find ways to make them applicable to explosions on the surface of the sun.

    • Photo: Eoin O Colgain

      Eoin O Colgain answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      I recently wrote a paper with an experimental nanoscientist. Maybe not the best, but solid work and a fun project.

      http://arxiv.org/pdf/1302.2105.pdf

      Note, the affiliation “Graphene Research Institute”.

    • Photo: colm bracken

      colm bracken answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      My final project for my degree was cool. We went to France to use really powerful telescopes. With the measurements of the galaxies that we took we were able to calculate how old the Universe is. We got an answer of about 13 billion years old, which is close to the accepted answer of 13.7 billion years old. I’m happy to say that I got a 1st class honors for this project!

    • Photo: Stephen Scully

      Stephen Scully answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      My favourite project was to build a radio telescope. It is now used by the college as a teaching tool for astrophysics students. It was a really cool project that thought me all about stars, planets and how orbits work. My favourite thing to use it for is scanning the milkyway galaxy.

Comments

  • Photo: sarah2013xxx

    sarah2013xxx commented on :

    thank you for answering my question! why is there no gravity in space?

    • Photo: Stephen

      Stephen commented on :

      The closer you are to a large object, like the Earth, the stronger the pull of gravity is on you. If you are further away then the gravity is less. So in deep space, very far from every large object you will feel very little gravity. This is why deep space has “no” gravity.

      In orbit there are different effects which do the same thing, where you are in a constant state of free fall leading to the apparent lack of gravity.