Tag: astronomy
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The howling Universe
Before I moved from IFT to IPhT, I filmed a video all about what standard sirens are and why they’re useful for cosmology. The video is now on Youtube, in English with Spanish subtitles. Take a look!
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Implicit none
The first programming language I ever learned was Fortran. And before you ask, no, I’m not seventy years old. It just so happened that during my undergraduate degree, I took two courses on numerical methods for physics which were taught in Fortran, and for good reason: Fortran is still one of the best languages to […]
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My first N months as a postdoc (where 0 < N < 12)
How long have I been a postdoc? It’s a little difficult to quantify. I finished my PhD thesis in December 2020, and submitted it in January 2021. I passed my viva in February 2021. I spent a few months climbing the walls waiting for my Spanish visa, and trying to do research at the same […]
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Writing my PhD thesis
How do you write a PhD thesis? This question sounds like the start of the old joke: “How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time”. A PhD thesis is a document which must explain, summarise and defend three or more years of research in your chosen field, often running to 40,000 words […]
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Thesis off-cuts: the reproducibility crisis in cosmology
As we frequently hear1, we’re now in the precision era of cosmology. What this really means is that we’re in the era of measuring things really well, and we’re getting really good at measuring things because we keep building ever more enormous and powerful telescopes. I remember attending the STFC Introductory Summer School on Astronomy […]
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Applying for a PhD in physics
Almost exactly one year ago, I sent my final two applications off for PhD places in cosmology. One year on, as my department prepares to interview the candidates for October 2018 entry, I wanted to reflect on the application process. In total, I sent off nine applications and had three interviews. I was fortunate in […]