I’m coming to the end of my days in Sheffield and after completely crippling myself financially my mind has turned to a time when I can sit down, look around and say: “Bloody hell Andrew, you have made it my son.”
And what will that fateful day look like? Well here is an indication...
1) I will have a white Mac book and I will regularly take it to a posh coffee shop, open it up and sit in front of it pretending I am doing something very important whilst drinking a latte.
2) I will stop having haircuts and instead have my hair styled.
3) I will have a gym membership. I will never use the gym, but I won’t bother cancelling the membership because at the end of the day what is £30 a month?
4) I will stop saying ‘a pint of your cheapest lager please barman’.
5) In the winter I will go skiing. I’m not talking about skiing in Bulgaria or on some cheap eastern European mountain. No I am going to a pretentious resort in France or Canada.
6) I will have a big plant, one that requires watering and adds ‘atmosphere’ and ‘vibe’ to my house. I might put it next to my rug (not wicker, as they bring back dark images).
7) I will have a digital radio. Did you know they have a little screen telling you what the song and artist is that is playing? Technology is amazing these days - that's much better than my manual thing with the tuning wheel that if you move quarter of a millimetre you get Grfrsakfdjgkjgldskgdlfksdljgdsslj.
8) I will download music LEGALLY.
9) I will have a subscription for the economist and buy a quality newspaper full price.
10) When I go shopping I will pick things off the shelf regardless of if they are on special offer. I
will also buy extravagances such as cherries and Ribena without a second thought.
11) I will take taxis back from a) the station and b) nightclubs and bars
12) I will own a framed vintage photograph or piece of art.
13) I will pay for the free bus.
14) I will be the person that suggests we split the bill equally between the table and eat and drink accordingly.
15) In my cutlery drawer I will have a peeler, a masher and an ice-cream scoop.
As you can see I am a man full of ambition.
Inspired by two friends who have made it - Aled Owens and Stevie Cameron, and one that never will – Harry Clapham.
Showing posts with label university news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label university news. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sheffield University Astonomer teams up with NASA
A Sheffield University astronomer has started work on a NASA mission expected to find new planets and stars similar to the sun and earth.
Professor Michael Thompson, Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, will lead a team looking at the interior of stars in the NASA Kepler mission which was launched on March 7th. It is expected to find about 50 earth-sized planets orbiting stars over the next three and a half years.
The Kepler Spacecraft will use its telescope to measure the variations in brightness of 170,000 stars simultaneously. If a star dims at regular intervals it indicates a potential planet crossing the path of the telescope and so orbiting the star.
Professor Thompson said: “Kepler takes things to a new dimension in terms of the number of stars we can see and information we can gather.”
The mission will also allow scientists to learn more about the stars themselves through using the asteroseismology technique – the sound of stars. Professor Thompson will play a central role in this part of the mission as he has 20 years experience studying the interior of the sun.
Sound waves travel through stars which make them oscillate or flicker. The Kepler spacecraft will record these light fluctuations over weeks, months and years to measure the exact size of the oscillations and the frequency they oscillate at.
According to Professor Thompson, a good analogy for the process is thinking of a Hi-fi speaker in a bell jar. Although you would not be able to hear the speaker, if you could see it vibrating, you would know it was making a sound. By measuring those vibrations you could work out the frequencies of the sound.
In the same way you can work out the sound of stars, despite them sitting in a vacuum.
This process will allow the team to determine the size of the stars, their chemical composition and their rotation rate.
Professor Thompson said that by characterising a star we can calculate how far away a planet can be to support the type of life forms we are familiar with.
During the first nine months in space Kepler will survey more than 5000 stars for oscillations.
Based on those measurements around 1100 stars will be followed for detailed studies throughout the mission. The accuracy at which Kepler will be able to measure oscillations is so high that the science team expects to see stars change as they age.
Professor Thompson said: “The great excitement of the work with the Kepler mission is that we’ll be able to probe the interiors of different masses and different ages, permitting us to study young suns and old suns, as well as stars that are more or less massive than our own star.”
Professor Thompson is part of a consortium of 200 researchers from 50 institutions all over the world working on the Kepler mission. Professors from Birmingham and Central Lancashire
Universities and Queen Mary College, London are also leading teams as part of the Kepler mission.
For more detailed information visit Mike Trudeau's blog for an excellent analysis.
Professor Michael Thompson, Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, will lead a team looking at the interior of stars in the NASA Kepler mission which was launched on March 7th. It is expected to find about 50 earth-sized planets orbiting stars over the next three and a half years.
The Kepler Spacecraft will use its telescope to measure the variations in brightness of 170,000 stars simultaneously. If a star dims at regular intervals it indicates a potential planet crossing the path of the telescope and so orbiting the star.
Professor Thompson said: “Kepler takes things to a new dimension in terms of the number of stars we can see and information we can gather.”
The mission will also allow scientists to learn more about the stars themselves through using the asteroseismology technique – the sound of stars. Professor Thompson will play a central role in this part of the mission as he has 20 years experience studying the interior of the sun.
Sound waves travel through stars which make them oscillate or flicker. The Kepler spacecraft will record these light fluctuations over weeks, months and years to measure the exact size of the oscillations and the frequency they oscillate at.
According to Professor Thompson, a good analogy for the process is thinking of a Hi-fi speaker in a bell jar. Although you would not be able to hear the speaker, if you could see it vibrating, you would know it was making a sound. By measuring those vibrations you could work out the frequencies of the sound.
In the same way you can work out the sound of stars, despite them sitting in a vacuum.
This process will allow the team to determine the size of the stars, their chemical composition and their rotation rate.
Professor Thompson said that by characterising a star we can calculate how far away a planet can be to support the type of life forms we are familiar with.
During the first nine months in space Kepler will survey more than 5000 stars for oscillations.
Based on those measurements around 1100 stars will be followed for detailed studies throughout the mission. The accuracy at which Kepler will be able to measure oscillations is so high that the science team expects to see stars change as they age.
Professor Thompson said: “The great excitement of the work with the Kepler mission is that we’ll be able to probe the interiors of different masses and different ages, permitting us to study young suns and old suns, as well as stars that are more or less massive than our own star.”
Professor Thompson is part of a consortium of 200 researchers from 50 institutions all over the world working on the Kepler mission. Professors from Birmingham and Central Lancashire
Universities and Queen Mary College, London are also leading teams as part of the Kepler mission.
For more detailed information visit Mike Trudeau's blog for an excellent analysis.
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