Create An Expanding Universe
Gravity Simulator
Is gravity the same everywhere? Experiment with how the ball reacts in each of the Solar System locations by dropping or throwing the ball. How similar or different is each location to Earth?
Timeline of Astronomy
Did you know that our understanding of science and space had gradually been built over thousands of years? Discover the people from the past whose observations and experiments helped us understand our
Dorothy Vaughan
Year born: 1910
Research Areas: Computer Programming
"I changed what I could, and what I couldn't, I endured."
Karl Schwarzschild
Year born: 1873
Research Areas: Relativity, Black Holes, Quantum Theory, Stars, Comets
"Mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy, march in one front."
Stephen Hawking
Early Life
Stephen was born in 1942 in Oxford, UK during World War II. He decided that he wanted to study mathematics at university, but his father wanted him to choose medicine instead. He was accepted into University College Oxford but because they did not offer a degree in mathematics, Stephen chose to study physics. After three years (and, in his words, "not very much work"), he graduated with a first-class honours degree in natural sciences. From there, he went on to study cosmology at Cambridge University.
Year born: 1942
Research Areas: Cosmology, Theoretical Physics
"All my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them."
Katherine Johnson
Early Life
Katherine Johnson grew up in West Virginia, USA. Her mother was a teacher and her father a farmer and handyman. Katherine was curious about numbers from an early age and took every course in maths she could at West Virginia State College. She graduated with the highest honours in 1937 and took a job teaching at a Black public school in Virginia. In 1939, Katherine became the first Black woman to study for a postgraduate qualification at West Virginia University. She then took a break from studying and teaching to have children.
Year born: 1918
Research Areas: Rocket Flightpaths, Trajectories, Orbital Mechanics
"I loved going to work every single day"
Computers
Interferometers use a network of antennas, over a wide area, to create a virtual much larger single telescope. It would be impossible to build such instruments without powerful computers. Signals from different antennas must be added together with atomic-clock precision. Software must separate real signals from background noise and then produce a result that is useful for astronomers.