As you may know I have a background in Science, specifically Physics. Growing up I had numerous childhood aspirations, including, (but not limited to!), being a meteorologist,an airline pilot and astronomer. This last one particularly stuck with me and lead me to choose to study one of the more challenging degrees offered at the University of Manchester: Physics with Astrophysics.

I loved my time there immensely, and got a very unique opportunity in my 3rd year to study and experiment and the world famous Jodrell Bank, famed for having the third largest Radio Telescope in the world! The project I worked on (and got surprisingly good marks for!) was using a 7m Radio Telescope to accurately map and weigh our galaxy, the Milky Way. More Jodrell Bank information.

As part of my degree I chose to write a dissertation on Gravitational Waves and how we (try to!) measure them. This was a fascinating chance to learn about these theoretical ripples in the curvature of Spacetime that were predicted by Albert Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. In my paper I got to explore the extraordinary efforts being made to detect and measure these elusive ripples by teams of scientists around the world. If you’d like to find out more about them, I recommend this video which provides a good explanation of them:

For further reading, check out these too!
Gravitational Wave article on Einstein Online and Gravitational wave article on Wikipedia.

When on the poker road it’s difficult to keep on top of scientific news but still try to keep my finger on the pulse by reading about humankinds latest discoveries. Here are some of the best sources:
Science Daily
BBC Science
Eureka Alert

Finally, for a real time-passer and mind stretcher, check out Sporcle
It taught me all the countries of the world, and how to make money from it!