Two years after exhibiting with Tokamak Energy at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, I'm back this year but this time with the Make A Supernova group! It's a collaboration of scientists from Imperial College, AWE and the University of Oxford that all work on laboratory astrophysics. The aim of the stand is to get the public aware of the exciting field of research called laboratory astrophysics!
For anyone that is unsure, laboratory astrophysics is the field of research where scientists recreate astrophysical scenarios in the lab. Small-scale experiments can be scaled up using scaling laws to find out more about astrophysical events. One of the mot exciting, violent and impressive events in the Universe are supernovae, they are dying massive stars that end their lives with a bang! They eject matter at speeds close to 10% of the speed of light and give off more radiation than our Sun will ever emit in its lifetime! Supernovae can also outshine an entire galaxy in a brief moment. These powerful events are also the beginnings of life since it is in these spectacular explosions where heavier elements like calcium that makes up our bones and iron which makes up our blood are made. This is where the saying we are made of star dust comes from. Without supernovae we wouldn't exist therefore studying these events is important for learning more about the origins of life.
The Make A Supernova stand is all about recreating supernovae in the lab. A team of scientists from the University of Oxford (Nature Physics, Gregori et. al) managed to recreate the shock waves seen in supernovae explosions in the lab. They fired 3 laser beams using the Vulcan laser system at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory onto a miniscule carbon rod in an argon filled chamber. The rod heated up, turned into a plasma and exploded outwards, sending a shock waves outwards into the argon gas. A plastic grid was introduced into the setup to introduce inhomogeneities or 'lumps' into the flow just like the supernova Cassiopeia A (depicted in our logo below).
Our stand at The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is based on this work and the field of laboratory astrophysics. But why am I there? Well, my MSci project which you can find out more about here, is a laboratory astrophysics related project where I was recreating bow shocks found in regions around newly formed stars in the lab. I'll be talking all things laboratory astrophysics at the Exhibition - feel free to ask me as many questions as you'd like - comment down below!
Two/three months prior to the event I've been helping Dr. Suzuki-Vidal from Imperial College (Head of Make A Supernova stand from the Imperial team) prepare for the event. It's been so much fun having my own input into the event and being able to put my artistic and creative side to use - I loved it so much! Here's what the Imperial team have been doing in order to prepare for the event as well as us in action at the event in pictures and videos:
Go #TeamMakeASupernova ! We were sitting next to Spencer Kelly from BBC Click !! I totally FANGIRLED!!!
All the equipment has been transferred from Imperial to The Royal Society! Bring on #SummerScience
Yep, the hand gestures are a must when talking about supernovae!
I got to meet Spencer Kelly from BBC Click!!! Made my day!
Check out me and Spencer Kelly on BBC Click playing with the Air Vortex Canon demo at The Royal Society here! (6:08)
Plasma, the fourth state of matter, an ionised gas!
These two are obsessed with #PlasmaHorns -- whatever that means! ;)
Imperial Team! :)
One of my university lecturers, who happened to teach the 'Physics of the Universe' course, came to visit our stand! Thanks for coming Dr. Roberto Trotta! He's an amazing astrophysics and science communicator you definitely need to check him out here!
PLASMA BALL!
My MSci lab partner, Daniel Russell, helped out too! Our MSci project was in the field of #LaboratoryAstrophysics which was the field of the stand so we got to share our project experience with the #SummerScience visitors! Was SO much fun! You can check out what our MSci project was all about here.
Prep day for #SummerScience - bringing in all the equipment from Imperial to The Royal Society!
Vlogging my experience of #SummerScience with #MakeASupernova
Having so much fun at #SummerScience ! :)
#MakeASupernova team with peeps from Oxford, Imperial and AWE! Was so great to meet all these super cool scientists!
Got to see the AMAZING @thermoflynamics perform some SICK science-y rhymes!
#LunchBreak with the #ImperialTeam on Day 1 of #SummerScience
Had such beautiful weather!
Got to meet an amazing gravitational waves researcher from University of Southampton, Emma Osborne! She's also a YouTuber so check her out here and follow her @Emmanigma ! She's DOPE! She also gave me these super awesome postcards which you can purchase here.
Definitely check @Emmanigma out - she's ACE! She's such an inspiration and gave me so many lovely #scicomm tips ! #ForeverGrateful
Mega smoke ring maker
T-shirt design
First look at the stand! There's Colin Danson from AWE to add scale to the stand.
You can check out my short vlog of my experience of the event and the preparations leading to the event in the video below:
Just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to Jena Meinecke, Colin Danson and Francisco Suzuki-Vidal for organising an AMAZING stand at The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition! It was great fun to be a part of, I met some amazing scientists, science communicators, students and TV presenters! I even got to inspire an A level student to reconsider physics as a potential career path which made me day!
A special thank you goes to Francisco Suzuki-Vidal for making this experience super fun and for listening to my radical ideas for social media and for also doing Facebook LIVE videos with me!
All in all, it was a GREAT experience and I would definitely like to get involved again if the opportunity arises! I hope some of you reading this got a chance to visit The Royal Society and see the amazing scientific research on display!
