IAA Lecture Tues18th February 2025 – Larmor Theatre, QUB – Note – Tuesday!

Prof Monica Grady – “Rocks from Space”

Note, admission is Free, but as this is a Northern Ireland Science Festival event, tickets are required…..

https://nisciencefestival.com/events/rocks-from-space

Traditionally, astronomers study stars and planets by telescope. But we can also learn about them by using a microscope – through studying meteorites. From meteorites, we can learn about the processes and materials that shaped the Solar System and our planet. Tiny grains within meteorites have come from other stars, giving information about the stellar neighbourhood in which the Sun was born.

Meteorites are fragments of ancient material, natural objects that survive their fall to Earth from space. Some are metallic, but most are made of stone. They are the oldest objects that we have for study. Almost all meteorites are fragments from asteroids, and were formed at the birth of the Solar System, approximately 4570 million years ago. They show a compositional variation that spans a whole range of planetary materials, from completely unmelted and unfractionated stony chondrites to highly fractionated and differentiated iron meteorites. Meteorites, and components within them, carry records of all stages of Solar System history. There are also meteorites from the Moon and from Mars that give us insights to how these bodies have formed and evolved.

In her lecture, Monica will describe how the microscope is another tool that can be employed to trace stellar and planetary processes.

Monica Grady is Professor of Planetary and Space Sciences in the School of Physical Sciences at the Open University in Milton Keynes. She obtained a degree in Chemistry and Geology from the University of Durham in 1979, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1983. Her thesis concerned the carbon chemistry of meteorites, and she has continued this study throughout her subsequent career. Professor Grady has led major research programmes in the study of the origin and evolution of the Solar System through analysis of meteorites, the Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets. Her particular research interests are in carbon and nitrogen chemistry with additional expertise in the mineralogy of meteorites, especially of primitive meteorites and meteorites from Mars. Her work builds a bridge between the non-biological chemistry of the Galaxy and the origin of life on Earth. It also provides a framework within which the potential for life beyond Earth can be considered.

A full biography can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monica_Grady

This is a joint meeting with the Belfast Geologists Society

“Dawn of the Modern World: Life, Death and Rain in the late Triassic ”, by Dr Mike Simms, Irish Astronomical Association & Belfast Geologists Society.

Synopsis:

In November 1987 two young geologists stumbled upon evidence that the aridity of the Late Triassic was interrupted by greatly increased rainfall ~234 million years ago. This climate change appeared synchronous with mass extinction/diversification events both on land and in the sea. It was a key episode in the evolution of life, sometimes described as the Dawn of the Modern World, and affected everything from dinosaurs to dinoflagellates and coccoliths to coral reefs.
  Evidence for the Carnian Pluvial Episode was first announced in 1989 but was virtually ignored for 20 years. Since 2010 there has been a huge upsurge in interest worldwide. Research groups have confirmed much of what was reported, and hypothesized, in that first paper and the CPE has entered the scientific ‘mainstream’.

This talk will provide a history of the discovery of the CPE, the evidence for the climatic and biotic changes, more recent developments in the study of the CPE, and its implications for what is happening with our climate today.

Both of those geologists (now not so young) live in Northern Ireland today.

 Biography:

Mike has been Curator of Geology at National Museums NI since 1996, and a geologist since 1967. His interests range from fossils and ancient palaeoenvironments, to caves and what they tell us about landscape change and climate, with extraterrestrial interests in the origin and synthesis of elements and, of course, meteorites. Mike has had four fossil species named after him, including an exceptionally ugly Jurassic fish and a Jurassic cockroach.

Admission free, all are welcome, including Light Refreshments.

“Exploring our Solar System: Past, Present, and Future”

Synopsis:

Our Solar System is a rich and dynamical playground of rocky planets, gas and ice giants, and lots of chaotic and interesting smaller asteroids. Within the various small body populations in our Solar System, there lies is a treasure trove of information that can tell us about where we came from and how we came to exist.

In this talk I want to give a guided history tour of how we think we know how a Solar System is created, from the earliest dusty disk around the Sun, to planet formation, to what is currently out there now. I’ll then talk a bit about my own research into how we get this understanding from both ground and space-based telescopes, as well as creating models of Solar System bodies.

Finally, I’ll give everyone a sneak peek into the next revolutionary telescope, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, that is going to revolutionise our understanding of the Solar System.

Bio; I am a current 3^rd (and final) year PhD student at Queen’s University Belfast, where I work with Dr Meg Schwamb on understanding the small Solar System bodies through both observational studies with ground-based telescopes, and by creating models and simulations to compare.

I completed my undergraduate master’s study at Queen’s University Belfast in 2022 in ground-based observations of comets and their brightening as they move nearer to the Sun.

Abstract: Massive stars play a fundamental role in sculpting the chemical make up of the Universe. Yet our understanding of how these stars actually evolve is incomplete. In extremely massive stars, we predict that they should experience violent pulsations towards the end of their lives. These pulsations would be strong enough to remove entire layers from the outer regions of the star. However, we have so far not been able to observationally confirm that such phenomena take place. In this talk I will explore the physics behind these giant stellar hiccups, and how we might begin to search for them in the night sky.

Biography: Dr Charlotte Angus is a Research Fellow at the Queen’s University Belfast, working on a wide variety of exotic transient phenomena; from massive stellar explosions, to stars being shredded by black holes. She received her PhD at the University of Warwick in 2017, and has since worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southampton, then won a DARK Research Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen in 2019. Since moving to QUB at the end of last year, she has infiltrated the IAA, and accidentally been elected as its co-Vice President. She has yet to successfully solve one of Terry’s Teasers. 

Admission free, all are welcome, including Light Refreshments.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Due to a major conference at QUB at this time –

1) There will be no parking in front of the physics building or around Whitla Hall. Parking will be available via the Botanic Avenue entrance, or on-street if you can find a spot.

2) The normal entrance to the Larmor Lecture Theatre will be closed. Entry and exit will be via the original entrance for the Bell Lecture Theatre at the other end of the building to the main physics building, and through it to the Larmor via the ground floor. This entrance requires QUB card access, so QUB staff will let people in and show them the way to the Larmor in batches. It also applies to exiting after the meeting, so your co-operation is requested. This will be inconvenient, but it can’t be avoided.

3) There will be no tea/coffee after the meeting this time.

4) As parking spaces will be at a premium, consider using public transport or car-sharing.

 “Cosmology on the Brink: What exploding stars tell us about the history of the Universe”

Abstract: Our Universe is expanding. The theory of the Big Bang and cosmic expansion is backed up by countless evidence, but what it is made of and how that content controls the expansion rate is still a mystery: 70% is some `dark energy’ which appears to be countering gravity to accelerate the expansion rate, and what dark energy is and how it works are some of the largest open questions in modern physics.

Measuring the expansion rate at different points in cosmic history is key to understanding how dark energy works and eventually what it is made of. The most simple models suggest that dark energy should be the same at all places and times, while myriad more exotic theories exist that predict an evolving dark energy. Modern day experiments are able to make expansion-rate measurements to extraordinary precision. This year, two major astronomical surveys combined to provide the most accurate measurements of dark energy’s effects and left tantalising clues that it is indeed evolving, a result which if proven would require a full re-write of one of the fundamental theories of the Universe. One of these, the Dark Energy Survey, makes use of a particular type of exploding star (supernova) to make its distance measurements. DES has re-defined how cosmology is performed with supernovae, with stunning success. In this talk I will introduce the background of dark energy and supernova-cosmology, describe how DES managed to make such precise measurements, and discuss the implications of a non-constant dark energy for our cosmological understanding.

Bio:

Phil Wiseman is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. He received an undergraduate Masters in Physics from Durham University in 2014 before moving to Munich for a PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. There, he worked on gamma-ray bursts and the interstellar medium of very distant galaxies. In 2017 he moved to Southampton to begin work on the Dark Energy Survey. He has since worked on numerous aspects of supernovae with a particular interest in how they relate to the galaxies in which they explode. Recently, he led a team that discovered and analysed the most energetic cosmic event ever observed, believed to be caused by a supermassive black hole. He will continue research to understand that new phenomenon for which he was awarded an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship.

Admission free, all are welcome.

“GoTo, Black Gem, and the hunt for the optical counterpart of Gravitational wave events.”

Abstract:

The discovery of gravitational waves in 2015 was the culmination of

decades of developing and building ever more sensitive

instruments. However, these observations cant pin-point exactly where

in the sky these bursts come from. If astronomers can identify the

electromagnetic counterpart of such events we can gain so much more

information about the nature of the event. The GOTO and BlackGem

optical surveys are two projects which aim to detect these

counterparts. I will outline how they go about searching for transient

events, their discoveries and highlight how the wider public can help

in this work.

Bio:

Gavin obtained his PhD in X-ray observations of accreting binary stars

from UCL’s Mullard Space Science Lab, after which he spent two years

at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Returing to MSSL for

more than ten years, he then moved to Armagh Observatory. His

interests include aaccreting binaries, stellar activity, transients

and exo-planets and uses multi-wavelength observations from radio to

X-ray bands. He is the Community Scientist for ESA’s Plato mission due

to be launched in 2026.

VENUE: Larmor Lecture Theatre, Astrophysics Research Centre, Physics Building, QUB.

Admission free, including light refreshments, All welcome.

“Big Science with Small Telescopes”

Synopsis:

With the successful launch of EIRSAT-1, Ireland has become a space-faring nation. This 2kg CubeSat packs a lot into its small volume. Using technology originally developed by an Irish company for use in PET scanners, a miniaturized gamma-ray detector on-board is designed to pick up short-lived bursts of high-energy radiation from dying stars. The spacecraft also contains a magnetic attitude control testbed, a heat resistant surface treatment experiment, and a deployable antenna.

Turning EIRSAT-1 from an idea to reality required the hard work and dedication over 6 years of a core team of physics, engineering, maths and computer science students, supported by the European Space Agency’s ‘Fly Your Satellite’ programme and UCD staff.  

Space is a harsh and unforgiving environment. To ensure that instruments can survive launch, and operate  successfully in space, they must withstand strenuous testing on the ground. All the experiments developed in-house had to go through rigorous ‘shake ‘n bake’ test campaigns to ensure their suitability for the space environment.

As well as building scientific and technology demonstration payloads for space, another goal of the mission is to inspire the next generation of space scientists, engineers, designers, dreamers & creators. A poem that was co-created by school students and creative writers is etched on the spacecraft.

After its launch from California on December 1^st 2023, there were some tense moments until a 2-way communication link was established. Early in the mission, the spacecraft spin rate rapidly increased, presenting a serious risk of mission loss. Thanks to swift action by the team, the spin rate is under control, with the root cause still under investigation. In a Sun Synchronous orbit at an altitude of ~507km, EIRSAT-1 has an expected lifetime of 2-3 years, after which time it will burn up as it re-enters Earth’s atmosphere.

I will give an update on the mission, its goals and latest results.

Bio:

LORRAINE HANLON is Full Professor of Astronomy at UCD and Director of UCD’s Centre for Space Research. She did her undergraduate (BSc) and graduate (MSc and PhD) degrees in Experimental Physics and was a research fellow and an EU Human Capital and Mobility fellow at the European Space and Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, ESA’s establishment for space mission development. She joined the academic staff of UCD in 1996, serving as Head of the School of Physics between 2008 and 2011.

Her main research interests are in high-energy astrophysics, gamma-ray bursts, multi-messenger astronomy, robotic telescopes, and space instrumentation.

Lorraine was Chair of ESA’s Astronomy Working Group and a member of the ESA Space Science Advisory Committee between 2019 and 2023. She has served as science advisor to the Irish delegation to the ESA Science Programme Committee since 2011 and is a member of the National Advisory Committee for the European Southern Observatory. She is a former trustee of the Royal Astronomical Society and a former Chair of the INTEGRAL Users’ Group.

She is the Endorsing Professor for EIRSAT-1, Ireland’s first satellite, a CubeSat that was developed by an interdisciplinary team of UCD students and staff under ESA’s ‘Fly Your Satellite!’ programme. EIRSAT-1 was launched on December 1st 2023 and is currently operational in a Sun Synchronous orbit.