Astronomy Astrophiz 208: Dr Alex Cameron ~ Unusual galaxies in the Early Universe

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/astrophiz/astrophiz-208-unusual-galaxies-in-the-early-universe/

SUMMARY: A fabulous listen!

Meet Dr Alex Cameron from Oxford University, who is making fantastic discoveries about the earliest & most distant galaxies in our universe using the James Webb Space Telescope …& reveals his discovery of a new class of galaxy whose iridescent gas is so intense it outshines the output of all the stars within the galaxy itself. Astonishing!

TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the Astrophiz Podcasts. My name is Brendan O ‘Brien, and first of all, we would like to acknowledge Australia’s first astronomers, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land we are on.

This episode is produced on Yorta Yorta Country. And we’d also like you to influence your local politicians to do more to mitigate climate change by moving from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. We are now in our tenth year of production with over 200 fabulous interviews with top scientists from all over the world.

Each month we produce two fabulous episodes. On the first of each month, Dr Ian ‘AstroBlog’ Musgrave gives us his monthly sky guide plus a unique astrophotography challenge.
Then, on the 15th of each month, we publish an interview with a leading astronomer, astrophysicist, Space Scientist, Data Scientist, Telescope Engineer, Project Manager or Particle Physicist. And we discover their science journey and rare insights into how they think and conduct their amazing research into exactly how our universe works.

Our audio files and transcripts are available on our website at AstrophizDOTcom. And our MP3 files can be freely streamed or downloaded to your favourite device from our SoundCloud channel, our free Audible stream, YouTube podcasts and Apple podcasts.

So right now we’re zooming over 11 time zones to Oxford University to speak with an amazing astrophysicist, who is making fantastic discoveries using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Meet Dr. Alex Cameron, you’ll love his stories.

Brendan: Hello, Alex.

Alex: Hello, Brendan.

Brendan: Today, listeners,we’re really excited to introduce you to Dr. Alex Cameron, who is an astrophysicist who does exciting research using instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope to augment his awesome chemistry skills to dissect the most distant galaxies in space and time to understand how they’ve evolved over the last 13 billion years … and he’s just discovered an amazing galaxy using the JWST that may well be the first identified in a completely new class of Galaxy that opens a new door on our understanding of Galaxy evolution.

Now first of all, congratulations on your latest discovery, Alex, of Galaxy GS-NDG-9422 and your appointment to your postdoc position as a researcher at the University of Oxford.
And congratulations on another recent Nature paper that you worked on all about the most distant galaxy ever discovered … and especially Alex, Thanks for speaking with us today.

Alex: Thanks very much, Brendan. It’s a great pleasure to be speaking today. And yes, it really is exciting times in the field of galaxy evolution, particularly galaxy evolution in the early universe. So it’s been a lot of fun working with the JWST and I’m excited to share a bit of that with you today. –

Brendan: Excellent, okay, that’s great. So before we talk about your work on novel galaxies and galaxies far, far away and your postdoc research, Could you tell us the highlights of where you grew up, please, Alex,and could you tell us how you first became interested in science and space, please?

Alex: Well, I’m not sure if your listeners are aware, but in fact, actually, I’ve known you, Brendan, of course, for a very, very long time because I grew up very nearby to where you are. In fact, went to school just down the road from you. And as you would well know, the night skies in that part of the world are absolutely stunning.We get a lot of clear dark skies. And I mean, basically when I was a kid, I just used to love sitting out in the backyard.

I grew up on a farm out there. And I just used to love looking up at the sky and just really got this sense of awe from just the scale of it all. And I think from that age, I’ve always been fascinated to sort of learn more about, you know, what the university is, what’s outthere in the universe and how it all works. And so I think, you know, that’s sortof really where it all started.

Brendan: Fantastic. Okay, we share that.So now, could you tell us a little bit about your school days at Wangaratta High School and your earliest ambitions and how they might have changed and evolved overtime.?

Alex: I think those early ambitions of being interested in space, you know,as I started to learn more about other things, I got interested in all sorts of different things. And in the end, actually, what I ended up specializing in for a few years, as I was sort of finishing high school and going on to university, I ended up doing a lot more chemistry rather than physics, just because I was quite interested in the way that, you know, molecules Interacted in the body and all of these sorts of things and so I think that sort of ended up taking me down a little bit Of a different path for a little while …

… but yeah, I was sort of lucky I guess to have been able to explore a lot of different things through that time.

Brendan: Thanks Alex. Sure. That’s great So after that successful school career here in beautiful northeast Victoria, you moved down to Australia’s top university,the University of Melbourne, also my Alma Mater, and there you did first your Bachelor of Science with Honours and stayed on for your Master’s degree in Chemistry … and then your PhD also at Melbourne University.

Now I know chemistry is still very much in your repertoire and the chemical evolution of galaxies is a primary focus for you. But could you tell us about that move into Astrophysics?

Alex: As you mentioned, I spent a lot of my bachelor degree doing chemistry, and then I went on into a Master’s degree. And that was the first time that I really got a taste for actually what it was to do research. And I think that was sort of a bit of a mixed experience for me, because on reflection, I think I really enjoyed all of the research, that process of doing research.

But I wasn’t so enthralled by the actual day -to -day of working in a chemistry lab. At the end of the day, I think you just spend a lot of your time cleaning glassware. And I think the overarching science goals were not things that I found quite as inspiring as what I could have. And so after my Masters, I took a little bit of time off. I spent a bit of time back at the farm and was actually back at the farm where, you know,being under those beautiful clear skies again, I sort of rediscovered that love of outer space. And then that just kind of gave me this idea, you know, what if I went back and did astrophysics?

And on a bit of a whim one day, I just sent an email to a professor at University of Melbourne by the name of Rachel Webster who was head of the Astrophysics group at Melbourne. And I just asked, look, you know,this is my background. I’ve come from chemistry, but I’d be really interested in potentially exploring doing astrophysics. Would I do this? You know, what would I have to do to make that happen?

And I was really lucky that she was extremely supportive and just said, “Yeah, go for it!

You know, you’ll be able to figure it out. it’s never too late to switch disciplines.”

And yeah, it was the best decision that I ever made because I think ever since then, I’ve discovered that I think the day -to -day aspects of astrophysics, the way that we analyse data, the sorts of datasets we use is something that I, that’s all something I really enjoy doing.

And then of course, just the overarching, bigger picture is something that really just,atthe end of the day, it just appeals to the little kid in me and I think that is something I feel quite lucky to have in my work is just that kind of driving passion that ultimately just gets back to that sort of child-like wonder of the universe…

Brendan: … And that curiosity … thanks, Alex. Now, you hinted at this in that last explanation there.. We know how important it is to have supportive supervisors and mentors. Would you like to tell us about some of the people who have supported you and inspired you as a scientist,  as a researcher or now in your postdoc position at Oxford?

Alex: Yeah, I’ve been incredibly lucky along the way to have some really great mentors and supervisors. I’ve already mentioned Rachel Webster who encouraged me to make the switch, and end up pursuing astrophysics … and then I ended up undertaking my PhD with Prof. Michele Trenti as supervisor at Melbourne, and I still remember the first day that I met him … when I was still deciding whether or not I would do this …  he was immediately so enthusiastic and supportive throughout my PhD along the way and continues to mentor me.  So, you know, I have been really lucky and very thankful to a lot of people who don’t have time to list all of them.

Brendan: Excellent. Thanks Alex.

So the plan for today is to have a very quick look at your PhD thesis, then put some of the most distant galaxies in the universe on the table before you dissect them. But then we should zoom in on your amazing discovery of Galaxy 9422, which is heralding a new understanding of galaxy evolution and a new class of galaxy. How does that all sound, Alex?

Alex: That sounds excellent, Brendan. Let’s dive into it.

Brendan: Okay, let’s go. So first, I had a look at your PhD thesis up on the Melbourne University website and its “Observational methods towards constraining the chemical evolution of galaxies.”

So!  What an introduction! …  and you’ve included four of your published papers in your thesis paper. So let’s cut to the chase, please, Alex. What big questions were you asking for your doctorate and what major problems did you encounter along the way that you had to overcome?

Alex: Well, the chemical evolution of galaxies is a very broad and complex topic and there’s a lot of different angles that you can come at this from. But one of the most fundamental aspects of being able to study the chemical evolution of galaxies is you have to be able to measure their current chemical composition. And it’s actually not at all trivial to do that. And so a lot of the research that I did during my PhD was trying to better understand some of the systematic certainties in the measurements we make to try and improve the accuracy with which we can measure the chemical composition of galaxies.

And so, you know, this will then open us up to having new and better measurements, which then ultimately will feed into all of the modeling that we do to try and understand this chemical evolution of galaxies.

Brendan: Yep.  Okay. So next, let’s follow that up in your thesis, which was awarded 10 months before the launch of a James Webb Space Telescope, you seemed a bit prescient here. You point out how the infrared instruments on the JWST could revolutionize our understanding of the chemical evolution of the very early and distant galaxies. Now, could you tell us why the infrared part of a spectrum is so important in this work. And in general, has that JWST NIRSpec instrument lived up to its promise?

Alex: Well, so if we want to understand the full history of the chemical evolution of galaxies, we want to be able to trace that all the way back to the very beginning.

So in the beginning of the universe, you know, the only elements were hydrogen and helium with some trace amounts of lithium. And everything else that makes up the periodic table has been forged by stars. So as stars form throughout their life cycle, they’ll create heavier elements, so oxygen, carbon, iron. And so to understand the full history of this, we ideally would like to trace this all the way back to the beginning.

Now, of course, You know, we’re very lucky that we can directly probe the past in some sense by looking at more and more distant galaxies. And so the very most distant galaxies that we can possibly observe, we’re observing them as they were a very short time after the Big Bang. But the catch is that because the universe is expanding, the light from those distant galaxies is getting redshifted.

And so what left those galaxies as visible light is being stretched to longer wavelengths and ends up arriving to us as infrared light. And so if we want to study these galaxies in the same detail using the same techniques that we do for nearby galaxies, we need to have infrared telescopes. And this is really one of the motivations behind the JWST.

Brendan: Excellent.

Alex: And So, JWST has been operational now for about two and a half years, and it really is fair to say that the NIRSpec instrument on JWST has been absolutely revolutionary. I think more so than even living up to it’s promise, I think it’s almost exceeded what we thought it would be able to do. It really has completely opened up this new window into being able to study the properties of galaxies, so the properties of the stars in the galaxies, the property of the gas in the galaxies, the chemical compositions, all the way back to the very, very early times, which is really exciting.
And it is fantastic! I think everyone is in awe of what the JWST data is telling us about all of those early and distant galaxies.

Brendan: Thank you, Alex. Now, you’ve painted the big picture for us. So let’s zoom in a little bit. I found one of your outreach videos on YouTube where you very cleverly used slinkies to explain redshift and blueshift for novices and it’s beautiful and I’ll give a link to that video at the end of this episode for those that want to chase it down. It’s excellent!
Can we put our propeller hats on for a few minutes, and could you tell us how astrophysicists measure the actual distance to these galaxies so far far away and What is this Zed number or Zee number that you use to quote redshift distance measures?

Brendan: Alex: Well measuring distance in astronomy is actually a very difficult business. If I was to give you the full story on how it’s done, it would probably take a whole podcast episode on its own. I’m not really the person’s best place to do that, but it starts by measuring star parallaxes in the nearby galaxy. People use these things called Cepheid variables and then Type 1A Supernovas to calibrate our distance measurements further and further out.

But then once that’s been done, which a lot of people have worked on this for a very long period of time, we’ve developed this cosmological model of how the universe works.

And so essentially, this allows us to assume this cosmological model and then use the amount of what we call cosmological redshift as a proxy for the distance to these galaxies and so this is where I come in …  what I will do is, I will measure the redshifts of galaxies so not directly measuring the distance but if once I assume these …  this cosmological model … I can infer the distance … and the way that we measure these redshifts is that there are specific signatures in the spectra of galaxies that are associated with particular chemical elements.

So different  chemical elements like to emit and absorb light at very specific wavelengths due to the electron transitions within them. And so when we look at the spectrum of a galaxy, we see all of these familiar patterns appearing.

So we see emission from hydrogen and oxygen and carbon at very particular wavelengths. But the more and more distant the galaxy is, the more that that pattern gets stretched to longer and longer wavelengths.

And so if we have a good quality spectrum of any of these galaxies, we can usually quite quickly determine which patterns to look for. And then as soon as we see them, we then just have to calculate how much we have to stretch the light by to match what we observe. And that gives us the redshift, which then given the cosmological model gives us this proxy distance measurement.

And so that’s the “Z”.

Brendan:  Thank you, Alex. That’s so cool. Okay, let’s segue to a recently discovered galaxy that you worked on that had a redshift of Z=14.

Now, let’s specifically mention JADES-GS-z14-0 and your team’s Nature paper. You characterize this galaxy as having a redshift of z = 14 .32 and it is now the most distant object ever discovered and it formed just after the Big Bang … just 290 million years after the Big Bang. And that was almost 14 billion years ago. That’s mind –boggling!
Can you give us a skinny on the technologies and the techniques you’ve hinted at them just then that your team used working out to make this breakthrough discovery of JADES-GS-z14?

Alex: So the survey that I’m a part of in which we found this very distant galaxy. The survey is called JADES. We use a combination of imaging and spectroscopy.

So the first thing that we have to do is identify candidates for very distant galaxies. And we do this with the imaging. So we image a patch of the sky very, very deeply using many different filters. You can imagine like a colour filter that blocks out all of the light except for in a particular wavelength range. And so we imaged the sky in a lot of different filters. And what we’re looking for to identify these distant galaxies is in the early phase of the universe that intergalactic medium, the bits of the universe that are between all of the galaxies was actually still neutral and that means …that it was very good at absorbing light that hydrogen would absorb, which is most light shorter than a particular wavelength.

So what you see in these galaxies is that when you look at their spectra, there’s a particular wavelength at 121 nanometers … where longer than that wavelength, the light is able to travel through the intergalactic medium and get to us. But shorter than that wavelength, it’s almost entirely absorbed, or in many cases, it is just entirely absorbed.

And so what we’re looking for, galaxies that have plenty of flux coming from them at sort of particular long wavelengths, but then suddenly they drop out and they disappear at shorter wavelengths. And so we can identify candidates for these with the imaging, but then in order to confirm that they are indeed at the red shifts that we think they are and are really in the distant universe, what we need is spectroscopy … because the imaging only gives us so much information.

So then once we’ve found these candidates that disappear in our short wavelength filters, we go back and we get spectra of these using spectroscopy. And so this is where we observe the galaxy and we take the light that comes from the galaxy and split it up into all of its different wavelengths and we get very fine measurements of how bright it is at each specific wavelength. And what we’re looking for when we get spectroscopy of these galaxies … is that we will be observing what was emitted from these galaxies as UV light. We’ll see this steady UV continuum shape and then there’ll be a very specific wavelength where it suddenly just drops off and goes to zero. And that’s exactly what we’ve found in this galaxy.

And the wavelength at which it drops off is compatible with taking that cutoff wavelength that I mentioned, so 121 nanometres, redshifting that to redshift of 14.3B years.

That’s how we’re able to determine the redshift.

Brendan: Nice! That’s beautiful. Congratulations on hunting that most distant galaxy. It is awesome. So close to the big bang!

Okay. Now, this brings us to today’s big ticket item. Your most recent discovery is a galaxy known as GS-NDG 9422 or I believe it’s just 9422 as it is affectionately known.

It’s opened up a whole new chapter in our understanding of galaxy evolution and I’m going to get you to talk us through it. I believe it started with you looking at some James Webb data and saying to yourself “Oh, that’s weird!”  

So what data were you looking at? What did you see that looked so weird? And what did you do next?

And who did you team up with and worked with to fully explore what that data was telling you?

Alex: So the story of this study began just looking at some of the spectra that we had of high redshift galaxies and we saw this galaxy 9422 … which It’s not quite as high a redshift as that GS-Z14 we were just talking about … but still very high redshift.
So a redshift of about 6 which is still within the first billion years after the big bang.

Brendan: Yep.

Alex: … And what’s unusual about this galaxy is that as I mentioned, we look for this characteristic feature where the light drops off at a very specific wavelength. But usually what was emitted from that galaxy is UV light, and we’re observing it in the infrared, but usually in that UV light, we observe that as you get closer and closer to this cutoff, it just gets brighter and brighter and brighter.

But when we looked at the spectrum of this galaxy, actually it peaked quite a long way before that, and then it sort of turned over and started dropping off towards that cutoff. And this is quite unusual because it’s not what we expect from the shape of the spectrum of a galaxy if the light is dominated by starlight in the galaxy.

And so I showed this to a colleague of mine, Dr. Harley Katz, who at the time was also at Oxford, he has recently moved to Chicago.

Now, so Harley is a theorist. He runs numerical simulations of galaxies. And so I showed it to him to ask him what he thought of it. And we came up with this idea that maybe the spectrum that we were observing wasn’t dominated by starlight, which is what we usually imagine the spectra of galaxies to be, but actually was dominated by gas emission. So this is gas that’s being heated and ionized by the stars in the galaxy. And we do observe emission from gas in basically all galaxies hat are actively forming stars.

We see some of this, but usually it’s subdominant compared to the stars. But we wondered maybe in this case that the emission was so bright that it’s actually outshining the stars and when Harley ran some models of what this would look like and we compared it to the galaxy that we were observing, we found that it was almost a perfect match.

And so, you know, we then did quite a bit more detailed analysis and, you know, we really do believe that this is the best explanation for what’s going on in this unusual galaxy.

And what’s exciting about this is that it’s telling us something about the properties of the stars in this particular galaxy.

So in order for the stars to be able to power such strong gas emission, the stars have to be a lot hotter and brighter than what we’re typically used to observing in stars that form in our present-day Milky Way galaxy.

So It’s potentially hinting at the fact that the properties of the stars that were forming at these early times were actually quite different and you know this is really what JWST was designed to do is to teach us about what was different in the early universe … and you know how these very early phases of galaxy evolution proceeded.

Brendan: Fantastic that’s awesome! And that’s a beautiful example of how observation and theory can work together to create these fantastic new science understandings. You’ve been turbo charging serendipity, Alex.
Now, a quick follow-up on 9422 … Since you and your colleagues went public with your paper, first on the ArXiv server and then peer-reviewed in Monthly Notices, how has the wider astro community reacted to this and what else has happened since as a result of your 9422 discovery?

Alex: Well it certainly prompted a lot of discussion, and you know certainly it’s been met with a lot of positive feedback. There’s also been a few other studies that have been done that have suggested possible alternatives to explain the shape of this spectrum, possibly due to absorption from neutral gas, which was something that we had explored a little bit in our paper.

And certainly it is possible to come up with a scenario in which you could explain the shape of the spectrum via absorption from neutral gas and a few other things, but it requires a very carefully constructed setup, which is what led us to originally disfavour it.

And then since then, you know, we’ve gone out looking for whether we can find other examples of this, because the more examples of this that we can find, then the more that that would argue against the sort of carefully constructed setup and probably argue more in favour of this kind of more simple scenario in which we just have to of the presence of sort of hotter and more massive stars.

And so, we think we found at least a handful of other galaxies that seem to have a very similar spectrum where we see all of the same key features that we were observing in 9422.

So it’s still early days. I think there’s still a bit of water to go under the bridge on this. But I think as we’re starting to find more galaxies, we think that fit this pattern. I think that seems to more and more support the idea that we originally put forward.

But you know, this is how cutting edge science happens. You know, you come up with an idea to explain this new observation that you make.

There’s always gonna be discussion on that. The first thing that you come up with is never gonna be perfectly correct. It’s always gonna undergo refinement. So you know, this is kind of the next phase that we’re in is trying to get more observations, develop more detailed models, and really, really try and pinpoint what’s going on in these early galaxies.

Brendan:  Fantastic! What an exciting phase to be in … and thanks Alex. Now, as a consequence of this, my head is spinning a bit now.

Can we return to some more about you as a scientist? You currently hold, you postdoc position there at the University of Oxford. Now, can I ask a couple of questions around that?

Firstly, for our early career astronomers listening, how did you line up that postdoc position at Oxford? And secondly, what is your role there? Do you have other non -research responsibilities? And Thirdly … I’m sorry about those multiple questions. What is the working and social environment at Oxford like for you, and possibly best not to mention the weather Alex?

Alex: Well, as far as how I lined up this job, it was advertised online sort of around the time. I think it was about a year before I was finishing up my PhD, I saw it advertised and I thought, you know, well, that looks like a great opportunity, you know, Oxford would be would be a great place to go and move and continue my research career. But also the specifics of the job …  working with JWST spectroscopic data. Galaxy Evolution was really in my specialization area and seemed like something that would be a great opportunity. And so I applied for the job and I was lucky enough to get it.

And then, you know, that was that. And a year later, I moved to Oxford. And as far as the job, and so I applied for the job, and I was lucky enough to get it. And then so that was that. And then a year later, I moved to Oxford.

As far as what the job itself entails, so on paper, it’s 100 % research … although I do have the opportunity to do some non-research responsibility.

So I have done a little bit of teaching while I’ve been at Oxford, but primarily I’m just working on research. And in that role, I’ve joined quite a large collaboration that extends, you know, well beyond Oxford. So this is this JADES survey that I mentioned earlier. So this is a collaboration between the NIRSpec and NIRCam instrument science team. So this is the spectrograph and the camera on board JWST.

So I’ve been working a lot with people across Europe and also colleagues in the US and Canada. So there is also work to be done that’s not just directly doing research, but also there’s been technical responsibilities for getting the survey running. And so I was involved in a lot of that as well. So in our spectroscopic survey, I played a big part in choosing the targets that we observed and calibrating the data and all of these sorts of things.

And so with some colleagues in Oxford and a colleague at the University of Hertfordshire was very involved in selecting the targets that we observed in our spectroscopic observations.

As far as the social environment in Oxford, I really love Oxford. It’s a great place to live. It’s basically a small country town that has a big university in it. And as I mentioned earlier, I grew up in the country. So I’ve enjoyed the slower pace that Oxford has compared to some other universities around the world. And the department itself is really great as well. I’ve been really lucky to work with a lot of great people, staff members, postdocs, students. Yeah, I really enjoyed my time here in Oxford.

The weather is, yes, not ideal. The sun actually was out briefly this morning for the first time in about two weeks. So hopefully it comes out again this afternoon. I might go outside and enjoy that ’cause who knows when I’ll see it again next.

Brendan: (laughs)Ah, Very good. It’s okay for me to laugh. We’ve got 30 degrees at the moment and

 it’s still spring. We’re not into summer yet. Okay. Look, you’ve brought us right up to date with the research. And right now, could you share with us some details of a particular part of your current research that you’re working on right now that’s really driving you crazy or is astonishingly exciting? Or maybe it’s even both. What’s going on, Alex?

Alex: Well, I think, you know, when JWST came along, I think all of us were really primed to expect the unexpected. But I think some of the things that we’ve observed are maybe even more surprising than what we thought they would be. And I think what’s becoming clear is that in order for our models of the stars in these galaxies and how they’re forming, how they’re evolving, in order for those to catch up and actually really be able to explain what we’re observing, it could take quite a lot of work. And I mean, this is what we do it for. This is the job.

But I think that’s equal parts exciting and daunting. It’s becoming clear that there’s still a lot of work we have to do to understand what’s going on in these galaxies, but you know that is the fun part. So I would say that’s kind of equal parts exciting and daunting I guess.

Brendan: Okay thanks Alex. Now I see you were finalizing your PhD throughout the height of the COVID pandemic. Now, how did COVID affect you and your family at the time? And what was the impact on your astrophysics research? And were there lessons learned?

Alex: Well, yeah, I mean, obviously, the COVID pandemic changed a lot of things for my life as it did for, did for almost everyone’s lives. I had been living in Melbourne, finishing off my PhD. I ended up, I moved back to the farm for the lockdowns that we had that year, which was a good decision. It was a much better environment for me to write my thesis, being back at the farm where I had a bit more access to fresh air and time outside.

In some ways, the silver lining was that I think in hindsight, it was quite nice actually to have been able to spend that year spending a lot of time with my family, because then at the end of that year, I then moved to Oxford. And of course, that means that I don’t see my family quite as much as I used to.

But certainly also, you know, I mean, there were a lot of challenges just, you know, staying sane during that period, which I think, you know, many many people can relate to … so yeah, it was an interesting time and I’m glad that we’ve sort of, you know, been able to come out the other side of it and go back to a slightly more normal existence.

Brendan: Indeed. Okay. Look to sum up. You’ve painted the big picture of distant galaxy research We’ve looked at your PhD your workload at Oxford. We’ve gone all sciencey talking about the JWST NIRSpec instrument and your discovery of 9422. Would you like to tell us about some of the things outside your research that regularly bring you great joy, Alex?

Alex: I think more than anything I just I really like any opportunity to get outside, get fresh air and whether it’s going to the mountains or go to the beach, you know, I love hiking and climbing and swimming.

Any time that I can go out and just sort of enjoy the outdoors is I think when I’m at my happiest. So that’s definitely something that I’m that I’m always looking for any opportunity to do.

Brendan: Excellent. Okay. What about outreach? I mentioned one of your YouTube videos earlier and I’ll give a link soon. Do you have anything else in the outreach pipeline? And is outreach an important part of being an astrophysicist?

Alex: I do think outreach is a very important being an astrophysicist, you know, I mean, this, this telescope that I’m lucky enough to be able to use the JWST. It’s …  it’s a very expensive telescope. And at the end of the day, it was, it was funded by taxpayer funds. And, and all of the research that I do is at some level funded by taxpayers in various parts of the world. And so I do think it is really important to then take the research that I do and bring it back to people. So I’m always looking for any opportunity to share what I am lucky enough to be able to do with whoever wants to listen.

So I recently, since I’ve been living in the UK, I tend to do a lot of public talks. I’m actually giving my next public talk next week in Abingdon, which is a little town south of Oxford.

So I’ve given quite a few of these public talks in in local areas, so to amateur astronomy societies, and I really enjoy those just as a way to kind of share the research that I do and my enthusiasm for it with other people. And they’re often quite well attended. And I think people really enjoy getting that access to the research that we do.

Brendan: Fantastic! Thank you very much. Okay, Alex. Finally, the mic is all yours, and you’ve got the opportunity now to give us your favourite rant or rave about one of the challenges that we humans face in science, in equity, in representations of diversity, or science denialism, that’s my bugbear, or science career paths, or your own passion for research or even our human quest for new knowledge.

The microphone is all yours, Alex.

Alex: I think one trouble we face, and I think we see this in science certainly, but also in politics and in a lot of parts of life, even just in relationships and things, is that it’s really hard sometimes to admit that you were wrong … changing your opinion on something I think can be quite a hard thing to do

But I think it’s a really important thing to be able to do … and you know, I mean, this is not something that I’m gonna claim that I’m Perfect on … but it’s something I really try and keep front of mind you know … when I’m doing my research, but also when I’m engaging in all other parts of society is just trying to keep in mind that I will quite often be wrong … it is a … an important part of science is, you know, putting ideas out there and sometimes they’re wrong … and … but you’ve got to be able to accept when the weight of evidence is pointing against that, and actually pointing in another direction … it’s okay to say “You know what …  I had an idea but it didn’t pan out to be correct … that’s okay” … that doesn’t mean … doesn’t mean I’m stupid, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that or with me, it’s just that we now have to go and pursue this other line of thinking.

And I think that can be quite a hard step to make. And I think we’re not always good at doing that. But I think it is something that if you can embrace that, you can embrace the fact that it’s okay to be wrong and change your and change your opinion. I think we all benefit from that.

Brendan:  Fantastic, yes. Thanks, Alex, follow the evidence and be prepared to say, “I don’t know.” That’s one of my favourite phrases. Okay, is there anything else we should watch out for in the near future? What are you keeping your eye on?

Alex:  Well, I mean, I think there’s still a lot of exciting stuff to be done with JWST you know … we’ve had this very exciting initial phase where there’s been all of these … You know …  unusual findings that we found … the next phase I think is then really going to be digging in … in detail, and actually getting to the bottom of what’s going on in these distant galaxies, so I think that will certainly be an exciting time if … if maybe not quite as fast-paced as what the previous phase has been.

But then there’s also, you know, a whole host of other telescopes that will come online in the coming years. We’ve got, you know, we’re not far away from the Extremely Large Telescope. We’ve got things like the Vera Rubin Observatory. And it’s not that long until things like the Square Kilometer Array come online.

So there’s still a lot of exciting stuff to come. And so, you know, I think it’s exciting. For me, working on JWST at the moment is really trying to think about how that will fit into the overarching picture that we will develop over the next five or 10 years.

Brendan: Yeah. A golden time for astrophysics. Very exciting. Look, we’re almost out of time, Alex. Thank you so much, Dr. Alex Cameron, and on behalf of all of our listeners, and especially from me, it’s been really exciting in catching up with you to start with, and speaking with you about your research way over there in Oxford.

And listeners, you can find out about Slinky’s and Doppler Redshift and BlueShift by catching Alex’s brilliant YouTube video. It’s at TinyURL-DOT-com/redshiftslinky, all lowercase, all one word.

And thank you especially for your time, Alex. I know you’re flat chat all the time. You’ve got a grueling research schedule … and good luck with all your next adventures and all your future travels. and I’ll look forward to your next amazing discoveries. Thank you, Alex!

Alex: Thank you very much, Brendan. It’s been an absolute pleasure!

Brendan: Bye, mate.

Akex: Bye-bye.

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And remember, Astrophiz is free, no ads, and unsponsored….

But we always recommend that you check out Dr. Ian Musgrave’s  “Astroblogger” website to find out what’s up in the night sky … and in two weeks we’re bringing you Dr Ian Musgrave’s March SkyGuide  podcast … Keep looking up!

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