Dr Gina Panopoulou, Assistant professor, Chalmers University of Technology

12/27/22 • 16 min

In this episode, Dr Panopoulou spoke about how every galaxy has a magnetic field, and by using the polarisation of light we are able to map the structure of this field in our galaxy. We talked about the difficulties of doing this, including the limited information the polarisation of light can convey and how hard it is to check the accuracy of any results.

Previous Episode

Dr Christian Byrnes, Senior lecturer at the University of Sussex

Dr Byrnes talked about his journey to astrophysics having initially started out with a Mathematics degree at the University of Cambridge. He also talked about his research looking at the early universe - particularly the inflation period. Towards the end, he mentioned his work into primordial black holes and whether they may be the key to finding out about dark matter.

Next Episode

Dr Robert Simcoe, Director of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

In this episode, Dr Simcoe spoke about his research involving spectroscopy to look back into the early universe and search for the first stars. He also spoke about another interest of his - designing and building astronomical telescopes and instruments - and how it first began when he was still in high school. Lastly, he gave us a sneak peek into the job of a director of a huge astrophysics department like MIT's Kavli institute and the work that goes in to managing it.