The Time Slicer
In the latest Sixty Symbols video, regular contributor Professor Mike Merrifield talks about his own area of research.
In particular he describes the concept of “timeslicing” galaxies.
Mike’s very upfront in the video, conceding most of the work here was done by his PhD student Thomas Peterken.
Since we recorded the video, Tom has actually completed his PhD and become Dr Peterken.
There’s a tradition of wearing silly hats (see below) when you completed your PhD viva.
I‘ve also since learned Sixty Symbols (and its sister channel Deep Sky Videos) played a major role in Tom’s interest in physics.
And it was a factor in Tom’s decision to study at The University of Nottingham, where we make most of the videos.
I’ll let Tom tell us more:
“I’ve always been excited about science. I don’t remember exactly when I came across Sixty Symbols, but it must have been around when I was starting my A-levels in 2010, which I guess was relatively early in the 60S project.
“I do remember loving hearing about actual researchers talking passionately about the things that genuinely interested them. It reminded me that Physics (and science in general) can actually be really exciting, and is all around us, rather than just being a list of prescribed and fairly abstract formulae to learn for an exam.
“It was also engaging to see real scientists talking about real problems in physics that nobody knew how to solve. Those ‘but we really don’t fully know how this works’ moments were also amazing… taking the subject out of the stuffy facts-and-exams box and highlighting how it’s a living and evolving and incomplete thing.
“Deep Sky Videos started around the time that I was applying to study physics at university which got me so excited because astronomy was my favourite part of physics.
“I don’t think it was until I went to the University of Nottingham ‘open day’ that I realised that the people in the videos would actually be the ones teaching the undergraduates. I do remember having that slight fangirl moment when I saw Meghan Gray, Mike Merrifield, Phil Moriarty, and the others in real life, and I was so happy to see that the excitement that the Profs had for their subjects when I visited matched their “on screen personas”.
“That’s the main reason I ended up choosing Nottingham as my first choice university.
“I kept watching the videos now and then through undergrad, and I loved reading the comments about how so many people wished they had my lecturers to teach them.
“Kind of by accident I ended up doing a research project with Meghan Gray in my third year studying galaxies in clusters, having already been inspired by her to keep studying the subject.
“It was the “unknowns” part of astronomy that pushed me to do a PhD. I applied to a few places but in the end I stuck in Nottingham, at least partly because I hadn’t encountered quite the same enthusiasm for the subject and for public engagement anywhere else.
“I don’t think Mike (Merrifield) knew who I was before I asked him about the (very open-ended) project he was offering on studying galaxies with MaNGA. I had gotten interested in IFU observations because of some work I’d come across in my Master’s year looking at jellyfish galaxies, very similar to the DSV on M90.
“My PhD took a few different turns as everyone’s does. I started out looking at whether the gas inside spiral arms is different to the gas between them, and moved onto whether the stars themselves are different, before eventually working on the research which actually went into my thesis, which was looking at how we can measure the age distributions of stellar populations and what that can tell us about galaxies’ growth over time, as Mike talked about.”
For many years I have spoken to young people who watch our videos.
Sometimes I say (half jokingly): “I hope one day I will be making videos about YOUR research’”
Well, now it’s happening for real.
