• Question: What inspirered you to become a astrophysicist and when did you start liking it????

    Asked by bussellash to Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Mario, Sam on 11 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by woodwardhounsell.
    • Photo: Clare Burrage

      Clare Burrage answered on 11 Mar 2012:

      I would call myself a cosmologist, not an astrophysicist. I would say that astrophysics is the study of stars and planets and galaxies, and cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole. We ask questions like: how did the universe begin, and how will the universe end?
      I remember growing up close to the Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire and thinking it was so cool that people could look up into the skies and find out what was going on there. At the time though I never thought I might do that when I grew up!

    • Photo: Elizabeth Pearson

      Elizabeth Pearson answered on 11 Mar 2012:

      I am an astrophysicist (which, apparently, I can’t spell. That took three tries!). I always loved physics and loved all those pictures of nebula and galaxies, you know the pretty ones. The more I learned the more I wanted to know. How are galaxies born? What keeps them together? Why are they different if everything was the same at the Big Bang? But I didn’t just want to be told them. I wanted to find them out, to be the first person to know, tell other people. So that’s what I did!

    • Photo: Sam Vinko

      Sam Vinko answered on 11 Mar 2012:

      As a non-astrophysicist, I suppose my answer would have to be “nothing quite enough”. I have been to a couple of observatories though and it was always awe-inspiring; if anything could lure me in, it would be that!

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