Podcast: Spontaneous Complexity

• By Jasmin Evans
• October 6, 2015
• Comments Off on Podcast: Spontaneous Complexity

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Transcript (Text, PDF)

Jasmin Evans is an undergrad in astronomy and physics at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She shadowed us for the week and while she was here, she interviewed Dr. John Mather for our podcast. We let her take the lead on this one, so we hope you enjoy! Her guest blog entry is below, podcast is linked above. – Maggie & Sara

Dr. John Mather is the Senior Project Scientist on the JWST project, in 2006 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics along with George Smoot for the their work with COBE to show that the cosmic microwave background has a blackbody spectrum within 50ppm, which cements in place the big bang theory of the formation of the universe…so as you can imagine, I was a little nervous about meeting him. He agreed to talk to me about his journey into science, as he has a very interesting background back to his school days.

After the initial introductions, the cupcakes were handed around and there was no way for me to tackle it that didn’t involve a lot of chocolate frosting ending up all over my face. As we chatted before the interview, I was working on finding the opportune moment to take a bite…which turned out to be just as Dr Mather turned to me to ask a question. Fits of giggles ensued (luckily he also laughed), and the look of sheer cupcake terror in the image says it all! Anyway, I asked him questions about what lead him to science, what advice he would give to those young people currently trying to decide in which direction they should take their careers, and of course about JWST.

If you’d like to read more about John Mather, he has a bio on the JWST website.

All of Jasmin’s blog entries for Blueshift are available here.

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