Public Outreach

Currently I am giving the talk How I Wonder What You Are: The Birth, Life and Death of Stars (Café Scientifique, Dean Clough, Halifax on 24 February 2010 at 7:30 pm). Please contact me if you are interested in having me give this talk. It can be geared to adults or children of all ages and educational background.

Life at Owlers

View from my desk of the Calder Valley above Mytholmroyd

View of Owlers studio (and maybe me) from my desk

Links

Global Climate Change
An Inconvenient Truth

Contact
A great movie and and even better book by Carl Sagan.

Eclipse seen in Yorkshire!

The Starry Night by Van Gogh

and V838 Monocerotis

Why Physics?

To me physics is all about figuring out how the Universe works. Ultimately its findings are deeply philosophical, and it is this that makes physics (and astronomy) so fascinating. Not that I expect an answer as to why we are here or the meaning of life. Such quests are based on the notion that we occupy a special place in the Universe, which we do not. However, the ability to perceive ourselves and the Universe around us, should unite and motivate us in the continuing quest for knowledge and understanding, rather than focus on the trivial things that divide humanity (age, race, nationality, religion, sexuality). That quest, to me at least, gives meaning and purpose to our short time in this vast Universe.

Quotes

Why do you write to me 'God should punish the English'? I have no close connection to either one or the other. I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.
Albert Einstein (1915)
More Einstein Thoughts.

My birthday is listed in the papers as Aries but this is the sun sign which somebody with my birthday would have had when Ptolemy codified all that stuff. Because of the precessional shift of approximately one whole zodiacal sign over the AD era, my sun sign is in fact (if you can call it a fact) Pisces. If astrologers were doing something that had any connection with reality, this presumably ought to make a difference. Since they aren't, it doesn't. Scorpio could go retrograde up Uranus and it wouldn't make any difference.
Richard Dawkins (1995)

The Galaxy, you know, is not simply a flat ovoid of any sort; nor is the periphery a closed curve. Actually, it is a double spiral, with at least eighty percent of the inhabited planets on the Main Arm. Terminus is the extreme outer end of the spiral arm, and we are at the other - since, what is the opposite end of a spiral? Why, the center. Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov (1953)

The stars, like dust, encircle me
In the living mists of light;
And all of space I seem to see
In one vast burst of sight.
Isaac Asimov (1955)

(Black) is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.
Wassily Kandinsky (1911)

Despite my creative abilities, I always had a strong interest in science, and physics and astronomy in particular. When I was a young boy my father took me to the London Planetarium and bought me a planisphere - a simple set of plastic disks that showed the positions of the stars at any time or place. In the intervening years I have lost the little device, but not my fascination with the stars.

In 1989 I started studying for a physics degree with the Open University, and finally obtained my BSc in 2002. Towards the end of my studies I became increasingly interested in astrophysics and at the same time discovered that studying for PhD as a mature student was not entirely 'pie in the sky'. In 2002 I was offered a PPARC funded PhD research studentship at the University of Manchester, which I completed in 2006. At the beginning of 2007 I took up the post of Support Scientist for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia. Currently I am a visiting research fellow in the Astrophysics Research Centre (ARC) at Queen's University Belfast and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA) at The University of Manchester. Little did I realise where studying with the OU would ultimately lead me!

I am also a member of the Institute of Physics, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a member of the European Astronomical Society, a member of the American Astronomical Society and a member of the Royal Society Of Chemistry Astrophysical Chemistry Group.

In the course of my two careers I have travelled extensively and visited the US, Mexico, Chile, Eire, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Russia, Malta, Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Kenya, South Africa, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan.

I like to read science (fact and fiction), philosophy, biography and art history. Other activities include gardening, photography, a little sailing, some horse riding, playing guitar and currently learning to play the piano.