• Question: How much does science you do link into technology? Such as developing new things?

    Asked by puffcheese to Amy, Grant, Martin, Shawn, Usman on 13 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Martin Archer

      Martin Archer answered on 13 Mar 2013:

      I don’t personally do too much with developing new technologies, but I’ve done a little bit in helping. At Imperial we’ve been working on trying to use the sorts of magnetometers (things that measure magnetic fields) that you get in smartphones like your compass apps and seeing if we could use them in space to do science. The first one was launched on a nano-satellite 30x10x10cm big and I’ve done a bit of work with it – seeing how well it operates basically. If they pan out they could be great for putting on satellites where weight is an issue because the usual types of magnetometers are pretty big and heavy. There’s a lot of work in this area going on at the moment, some people are even sending actual smartphones into space to do science!

    • Photo: Amy Tyndall

      Amy Tyndall answered on 14 Mar 2013:

      Personally, I don’t work on developing technology at all. But in astronomy, it’s happening all the time! New instruments are built for telescopes as well as the telescopes themselves, new computer programs are being made to help us analyse the data… There is something going on all the time. Did you know that the little chip (CCD) your digital camera uses was originally used in a satellite??

    • Photo: Grant Kennedy

      Grant Kennedy answered on 16 Mar 2013:

      Like Martin and Amy I don’t work on any specific technologies myself, but I do use them. We’re always wanting bigger and better telescopes, and these always need new or improved technology. A lot of the effort is focussed on sensors, and unsurprisingly some of those are very similar to digital cameras!
      g

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