A day in the life of an Astrophysicist at Oxford University

[Music] so as an astrophysicist i often get asked what do you actually do all day and i respond with well i try to answer questions that no one knows the answer to but that's kind of still hard to wrap your head around so i figured the best way to get that across is to show you and bring you along with my day so this is my office in the physics building i love it it has glass walls that i can write on and feel like house solving a mystery for us it's never aliens like it's never lupus the first thing i did though was check whether my code has been running okay overnight and it's not crashed as you can tell from my happy dance it did this is a code that tries to find the best model of the star formation history in a galaxy given the light that we observed from it i call it snitch because it's seeking the best model anyway my terrible puns aside it's got lots more galaxies to run on so time to make myself a drink now you might think i'm off to make a cup of tea but for fear of getting kicked out of britain for saying this i don't like tea i don't like coffee either so i'm having a hot squash because it's really cold out which is not a vegetable for all you americans watching it's like a concentrated fruit juice that you can have either hot or cold this is apple and blackcurrant flavored i'm not really used to drinking hot drinks though so sometimes it's too hot for me ouch but anyway uh time to actually start some work so the first thing i do every morning is write a to-do list in my bullet journal i love bullet journaling it kept me organized enough to write my phd in two months which is crazy after that though i pick some tunes and then get to clearing my inbox and replying to some emails i you know get a mix of emails in a day i come from subscribers with questions and then lots of science emails from collaborators sending draft journal articles through or a new plot that they've made that people are discussing on the thread as well to work out what it means this is my favorite kind of emails an email i get every day though is from what we call the archive preprint server which is essentially an archive for all of the astronomy journal articles but allows you free access before the journal to publish them and the email basically sends me a big list of all of them that have been posted that day so i'll scan down the list i'll pick out ones that i think are relevant to my research or just generally interesting really and i'll give those a quick read often i'll read the abstract which is kind of like the blurb or the summary of what they found and i'll look at the figures and the captions and maybe read the conclusions as well i disappear here for a sec because i've gone to the printer to grab the one that i've printed out to take to journal club later which is where a couple of us get together and we discuss the latest results so i'm back and i've now started to do a little bit of research so i wrote a journal article two years ago that compared this star formation history sort of the history of star formation in a galaxy for those that rotate and for those that don't like a spiral galaxy versus like a blob galaxy where the stars are on chaotic orbits and i made a prediction at the end of that paper that said that the ones that rotate should contain more hydrogen gas than the ones that don't now the data i needed to do that at the time didn't exist but now there's been this big survey to try and get the amount of hydrogen gas in a big sample of galaxies and it's the sample that i originally drew my 200 galaxies of rotating and numerating from so i grabbed that data and i got to grips with it a bit before i matched it to my old data to start with oh uh someone popped in at this point for a chat about plans for tonight but then back to the data you can see i've been making a plot of the distribution of the amount of hydrogen gas in each galaxy so for the rotating ones and comparing it to the non-rotating ones unfortunately it wasn't very conclusive because even though i started with about 200 galaxies when i matched it to the new data set which isn't quite complete yet at taking all the galaxies i only ended up with 40 of them and only three of those were the non-rotating ones now that can tell us a lot it means that a lot of the non-rotating ones probably didn't have detections in the first place at all so they probably don't have as much gas in them like i predicted the three galaxies doesn't exactly give me good statistics so i'll need to do a test uh later on on that to confirm all that data crunching now has made me hungry so it's a good job that thursdays at 11 is tea time in the physics department so i have to head all the way upstairs so i'm not good when i get to the top but it's a very nice view though and you get to walk past jocelyn balbanelle's office with a casual picture of her with barack obama outside you know just for some inspiration in your day anyway uh here's opposed to advertising the big public talk we've got tonight from heino falca one of the members of the event horizon team who took that really famous picture of uh the black hole back in march but for now the department gathers to chat over tea and most importantly cookies [Music] then it's a mad dash over to the new physics building there's about three physics building all within three minutes walk of each other and when there's a seminar on you have to be ready to dash between them even in the rain like today today this seminar will be given by heino falca unlike his talk this evening which is aimed at the public this one is for us experts to catch up on his latest work so we can ask him questions and figure out how it fits in with the science that each of us are doing so hino's talk was all about his efforts along with his group of post-docs and students to understand growing supermassive black holes these are black holes that are millions to billions of times more massive than the sun and they're found in the centers of galaxies now whilst i focus on how supermassive black holes affect the galaxies they live in high no focuses on what's happening on the smaller scales directly around the black hole specifically modeling the inflow of the material around the event horizon that point of no return where you have to be travelling with the speed of light to escape and these models that heino and his group make can then be directly compared to the image that the event horizon team are taking of say messier 87 the famous one they released earlier this year and the black hole at the center of the milky way sagittarius a star so of course all the questions were then on when we could expect the sagittarius a star image like the one they took the m87 the answer is don't hold your breath they're still working on it but a bit of a slower healthier pace than they did with the m87 one after that's finished it's time to go get lunch which is back over towards the building i work in now you would think the most likely place to find an astrophysicist in oxford is the astrophysics building but not at lunchtime the most likely place then is taylor's deli and it's great having such a good deli so close by to the department it's so easy today i have gone for a nice salad because after the big public talk tonight we'll actually be taking the speaker to dinner in college and that will be super rich food which i'm very excited for but until then we have to go back to the department canteen to find well everybody else really because well everybody needs a break in their day which is why in a department full of physicists it's sometimes hard not to end up talking about physics at lunch but most of us don't just because we need a break from thinking about it our desks and seminars all day too so we try and just have a laugh paul on the right here is just past survivor that's the phd defense where two examiners like read your thesis and question you on everything you've written in it and check that you know your stuff and then that's when you become a doctor when you pass so we were congratulating him on passing and asking him how it went and how it feels to be a doctor now anyway can't sit around all day so back to the office we go do some more science or in my case apparently quickly check emails and quickly check twitter my phone has been doing all the recording today so i'm missing the sort of quick bits of phone procrastination in my day anyway uh here i am reading up on some notes i made for my night sky news video that went up last week because i also talk about the same thing each week on bbc radio oxford with lily mitchell lily is great she lets me come on the radio for half an hour each month and talk about anything from jupiter to cosmology so i'm just reminding myself here of like the main point before just sending off a few more quick emails and packing up to head out again i feel like i'm gonna be meeting myself coming back here but bbc oxford is up in the north of town a 30 minute walk or so so to save my poor feet and some precious research time i usually just hop on the bus for five minutes up to summertown because the bus handily stops right outside the bbc uh i went outside in the waiting room and then the producer of the show comes and gets me and leads me through the back and into the studio and here's lily she's wonderful i love her she's so enthusiastic about space so obviously we get on and she asks all the right questions as well you know people at home are also thinking so here she's getting me set up with all the microphone and the fancy headphones they think it's a professional the song ends and then she introduces me astrophysicist dr becky smith lovely to have you as we do every month we're gonna gaze skywards to begin with can i just say how gorgeous the moon is looking yeah every time i've been walking home it's so full and bright isn't it it's so low down as well and then for the rest of time she gives me free reign to explain to people you know how to catch satin in the sky and the upcoming geminids meteor shower i also talked about the smallest black hole found so far that can tell us how big stars have to be when they die to make black holes and i talk about the current crisis in cosmology where none of the data agree on the current age of the universe and we don't really know what to do anymore it means there could be lots of new physics which is super exciting i think it's so important to talk about this sort of stuff on local radio because for one the research is happening like so close to people every day and also taxpayers partly fund this research as well so we should always communicate findings back to them but enough glamorous radio for one day back to the office now and back on the bus again where i thought i could film myself reading over my notes from the seminar before lunch but oh oh no oh no camera overboard quick rescue it make sure the phone is okay phew didn't crack my screen shocking really i'm a physicist i should have seen that one coming damn gravity but off we go back towards the city center this is just down the main road but it's a really pretty route in like this i'm starting to sound a bit like some sort of tour operator now but anyway we're going back past the physics building that weird massive tower used to be like a particle accelerator back in the 50s but now it's the phd student offices which is pretty cool i never had a desk in there unfortunately i'm kind of missed out a little bit but i did get an office with a giant window which is more than i can say for my office now even though it's made of glass but uh back at my desk i made another hot squash and then sat down to work or actually i probably watched the john lewis christmas outfit first that dragon edgar is adorable i'm a veritable tiny tim at christmas time anyway uh back to that statistical test on my sample of galaxies i was working on this morning i wasn't very hopeful that it would come out with anything significant because i have such a small number of galaxies after matching to the data that i have and i was right if i had 10 times the galaxies it would have been a significant difference so i guess it'll just be a waiting game for the data that i need to come through i'm doing all of this analysis using python and twitter notebooks though for those who are curious i think that's my one piece of advice to any aspiring researcher or scientist out there is to learn to code because you know you don't want to be doing all of this data science with huge samples in like a spreadsheet because it's not fun just after three it was time to head back upstairs to find the seminar speaker from before i wanted to talk to him about his work and how it specifically fits in with mine and specifically a hypothesis that i have so hino looks at what happens on the small scales right down near a black hole and how the material is taken in there i think about how the material that's taken in or even thrown back out before it even makes it past the event horizon affects the surrounding large scale of the galaxy so for my most recent paper i came up with a scheme to explain the findings that we had for black holes that had grown via very calm feeding compared to those that had grown through very chaotic feeding from like mergers of galaxies and so from what we found i wanted to run this theory by him and see what he thought and he gave me a lot to think about especially thinking about what assumptions had gone in to our results beforehand and how that could be affecting our conclusions and our findings back downstairs to my desk though i'm putting some nail oil on here because cuticle care is important people and i've got about 25 minutes before my next meeting so i decided to put a tweet out about my latest video that went up last night when i was filming this so i started clipping about 30 seconds of it to post my colleague walks in though and asked me if i can help with a favor and then we had a good chat about science for a couple of minutes where we were both up to when our work you know just catching each other up i updated him on my chat with heino for example then i finished clipping my video committed to it to a format that twitter actually likes and then i posted the tweet then i wrote a note just reminding myself of what haina and i had talked about so that when i come back to it another day i won't have forgotten so i quickly checked my emails again and then i grabbed that paper i printed out earlier today ready to head to journal club with my group which includes my phd student tobias say hi to bias everybody and i was getting called again so i made myself another hot squash this time in my favorite mug oil with the poodles already then the professor in our group chris joined us and we got chatting about each of the papers we brought so i brought one on feedback from supermassive black holes obviously that's my thing spice brought one on how star formation in galaxies in very dense environments so like big clusters of galaxies is usually lower and chris brought one on a special type of star in the milky way no one person can be an expert on everything so this is why it's good to get people together to go over new results because you get differing viewpoints you get different analyses you get different hypotheses that come out of it and get ideas for what you might want to do next like what's the next observation on a telescope that you want to make like what data do you need to get that's sort of the standard process in astronomy you get an idea you apply for time on a telescope either an optical or a radio or an x-ray whatever it might be hopefully you then get awarded that time and you get to go observing either in like hawaii or laparo australia or chile or somewhere like that then you get to come back and analyze the data figure out what it's telling you about the universe and then publish a journal article on it before the whole process starts again and other people around the world are discussing your paper at a journal club somewhere it's why no two days as scientists are ever the same but i guess this one kind of gives you a good reflection with journal club finished it was time to get changed before the public talk tonight ready for our fancy dinner later you have no idea how pleased with myself i am that that shot worked is editing becky a real editor now anyway the walk to the other physics building took me a bit longer in my heels this time but i got myself a good spot before the lecture theater filled up with members of the public arriving for the talk as well hyno did such a good job explaining radio astronomy the center of our galaxy observations of the stars orbiting the supermassive black hole there and also just gravity itself as well to communicate why things are so weird around a black hole and maybe what would happen to anything falling in this was all to lead up to how him and the event horizon telescope team managed to make that amazing image of the supermassive black hole that's four billion times more massive than the sun at the center of the galaxy messier 87. he explained all about how the telescopes are combined across the entire earth to make a telescope with essentially an effective diameter of the earth and how the data was then combined to make the image i got very excited at one point when he talked about plans to take this one step further and put a telescope into space or even on the moon to make the effective diameter of the telescope even bigger like as big as space something we actually call space interferometry but the snippet of information i took with me from this talk was that 4.5 billion people worldwide have seen that image of m87 which is a truly incredible achievement with the talk and the q a session all done you can see i got very excited about space interferometry in my notes there was a drinks reception afterwards so that members of the public could interact with hino and also members of the physics department to ask more questions about what they've just heard but then later it was off to dinner in college oxford colleges are one of the best parts about being in oxford it's where the undergraduates live and our tour and it's kind of like a hall but with more of a community and sort of a familial vibe to it for me it's just a great place to socialize with other academics who aren't physicists and to be involved in this great community that's really steeped in history as well like our college was founded by henry viii so there's so much history when you walk these halls you can see though it was very dark outside by this point so uh here's some shots i took in the light another day and some of you might recognize it especially the stairs and the balcony of the hall this is christchurch but it's also the first thing of hogwarts that you see in the philosopher's stone [Music] welcome to hogwarts like neville found trevor and look that's the balcony where hermione was never better never better now whilst we do usually eat in hall at the high table as a researcher at the college tonight we're in a fancy side room for this like special dinner which is called the mckenna room which i love because it has this gorgeous fireplace and it's so old-school as well with like all the portraits on the wall there's this huge one of queen elizabeth behind me as well and we all got little name tags the college chefs are so good to us the food really is incredible and they do such a good job and i wish i had that level of skill what's nice is that these lectures and dinners are a twice yearly thing here and there's an impressive list of people that have given these lectures in the past including two nobel prize winners and some names you might recognize from me covering their work on this channel before as well i kind of hope to one day see my name on a list of lectures like this too now i didn't film anything at dinner because well that would be rude but trust me when i say the food was amazing but then it was time for my cinderella dash to catch my train home after a very very long but productive and enjoyable day it might not have looked much to some but this is truly my dream job and i get to do it all again tomorrow you

Channel: Dr. Becky

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Keywords: astronomy, space, physics, astrophysics, dayinthelife, university, college, scientist, astrophysicist, timelapse, cosmology, drbecky, Becky Smethurst, galaxies, supermassive black holes, m87, oxford university, christ church, oxford, day in the life, oxbridge, study with me, vlog, student, college life, phd life, university life, work experience, cambridge, student life, studying, research, science job, study in the uk, event horizon telescope, image of a black hole, degree, pomodoro, cosmos, work life

Id: XW_qIqLhPkI

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 27 2019