• Question: what sorts of things do you find out with your job and why do you like the discover things for our world what motivates you

    Asked by els14 to Monique, Ashley, Bernard, Carsten, MariaMagdalena on 10 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Starbro, Kriti, 835tntd32.
    • Photo: Monique Henson

      Monique Henson answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      In my job I study the biggest things in the Universe – galaxy clusters. They’re made of hundreds of thousands of galaxies all held together by gravity. Each of those galaxies contains hundreds of millions of stars, so galaxy clusters are truly massive.

      At the moment I’m using computer models of galaxy clusters to figure out what they look like. Are they spherical or egg shaped? How much dark matter is there in clusters and whereabouts is it? If we use measurements from a telescope to figure out how massive real clusters are, are we likely to get the answer wrong?

      I think I’m mainly motivated by my own nosiness. I like learning how things work and taking apart problems so that I can do them step by step.

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