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Asked by william102000 to Sam, Claire, Kate, Matt, Rob on 17 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by errish, eglendinning312, kaytlin312, javanlangar.
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Sam Geen answered on 17 Jun 2013:
So right now I’m trying to build a mathematical model for how much energy exploding stars give to the gas around them. A mathematical model is an equation (or a few equations) that describe how something works. I’m doing this so we can understand the lifecycle of stars, and what the gas in the galaxy looks like. It’s something people have been looking at for decades now, but new computers mean we can do simulations of the galaxy in 3D, which gives us lots of exciting possibilities.
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Kate Husband answered on 17 Jun 2013:
I am actually doing something similar to Sam. I’m looking at computer simulations of the universe to see where the galaxies I study came from, so what did they look like years ago. So the simulation models all the galaxies and matter and stuff in the universe over time (it’s a huge simulation!) And the results are freely available for anyone to look at.
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Robert Woolfson answered on 17 Jun 2013:
At the moment, I’m at a nanoscience conference learning about what a lot of other PhD students are up to in the field I work in. Basically, I’m sitting in a chair all day listening to highly technical presentations, half of which I’m not sure the person giving them understands.
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Matthew Pankhurst answered on 17 Jun 2013:
It’s actually a very exciting time right now – I had an idea a little while ago about how to speed up the way we investigate volcanic eruptions, which means now we can do it while it’s actually erupting! I’m gathering the final bits of data and will be submitting the work to Nature (a really cool science magazine) – wish me luck!
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Claire Lee answered on 19 Jun 2013:
In the LHC collisions we have a lot of particles that come out, and one thing we do is measure the momentum of all these particles. This is useful because momentum is conserved – so if you add it all up it should come to zero. For some events though you don’t detect one of the particles (like a neutrino), so it looks like you’re missing some momentum, and you can calculate how much. Also, some new types of particles we might create could also not be detected, and then we could see a LOT of missing momentum (there are people doing these studies now).
In ATLAS we have a type of detector called a calorimeter which does this measurement of “missing momentum” for us. It’s a very good measurement, but it also has some limitations. What I am doing is working on a new way to measure this missing momentum, using a different piece of the detector. This is a good thing to do, because it provides a double check on the first measurement, so overall you can get better results (and exclude events where the one measurement says there is lots of missing momentum, but in reality there isn’t). It all helps to get the best possible info out of the data we have.
This week is ATLAS week, which is kind of like a mini-conference just for ATLAS people. There are 3000 people working on ATLAS, and everybody works on a couple of small things, in teams. There is a lot of cross-talk between the groups, but a few times a year we have an ATLAS week where all the latest results are presented for everyone. So the past few weeks I have been seriously busy finishing some studies I’ve been working on, getting my latest results ready for this week.
Also, we have a conference paper we are working on, so there is a lot of work going into that too – getting all the plots ready, tying up loose ends, etc…
Finally, I also do other things, like taking visitors underground to see ATLAS. I’m also, together with some friends, working on a standup comedy evening we’re going to have here at CERN, where scientists will use standup comedy to explain some of the stuff they do.
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