A few weeks ago, we told you that Chandra was going to start introducing video into our blog. We've done some minor dabbling so far, but now we're stepping it up a bit. Today we are posting our first attempt at what we’re calling (at the moment) "Meet an Astronomer." The idea is to do a quick interview with a scientist to give a small peek into their world. Let’s face it, scientists – and science itself – can seem a little off-putting. This hopefully will make both of those feel a little more accessible and personal.
Our guinea pig, so to speak (did something bad happen to a guinea pig, we wonder, to start that expression? PETA? Anyone?), is Jonathan McDowell. While we were talking with Jonathan, it occurred to us that we should ask the Chandra blog readers what else we should be asking about. So if you have a desire to ask something of Jonathan particularly or an astronomy question in general, just let us know. Who knows? Maybe we'll be able to answer your question next time. Or at least let us know if you know what happened to the guinea pig.
-Megan Watzke, CXC
- chandra's blog
- Login or register to post comments
WOW
Inspiring video and super astronomer. Thanks
Nice Video. I prefer
Nice Video. I prefer listening and watching video to reading large blocks of text. Thanks for sharing.
Good video. I prefer
Good video. I prefer listening and watching video to reading large blocks of text so I'm all for more videos in the future. I'll get thinking about some useful questions I'd like answered too.
Oh, and on another note, the guinea pig was often used as a test subject in biological experiments in the 17th century. More recently they have been used as model organisms in experiments, although mice and rats are often used instead nowadays. "Our guinea pig", though, sounds a better term to use than "Our rat"!
Tim
Re: Video Blog: Meet an Astronomer
Nice webcast, a lot of interesting facts regarding chandra, CERN and LHC
Jonathan McDowell
Jonathan, Regarding the LHC at CERN do forsee or are you looking for any results from the collider that may influence or affect your work on black holes?
Thanks,
Walter P Dodson
Walter, When they fix LHC
Walter,
When they fix LHC and get it going, I think the results will be very exciting. But they probably won't directly affect my own research, which concentrates on what it's like to be some distance from the black hole. The folks who are looking at the internal structure of black holes, as well as those studying how black holes slowly evaporate due to the "Hawking effect" will be much more directly affected,
as will those who study the first fraction of a second of the Big Bang.
Regards, Jonathan