PhD Student, University of Southern Queensland
I'm Jake, a current PhD student at the University of Southern Queensland, based in sunny Queensland, Australia.
My PhD research involves exoplanets, planets discovered beyond our own solar system. I'm going to detect large rocky planets and small gassy worlds using NASA's new planet finding telescope TESS and Toowoomba's own telescope array MINERVA-Australis. I'm then looking into what makes up these big rocky 'Super-Earths' and small gassy 'Sub-Neptunes' to better understand the habitability of such worlds.
I love talking about science as much as conducting it and would consider myself to be a scientists and a science communicator. I've previously worked at Questacon, Australia's National Science and Technology Centre in the nation's capital. There I travelled around Australia, presenting STEM shows and workshops to primary schools, high schools and the broader Australian public.
Curious Kids: What existed before the Big Bang? Did something have to be there to go boom?
Dec 04, 2018 00:22 am UTC| Science
This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions theyd like an expert to answer. All questions are welcome serious, weird or wacky! You might also like the...
Curious Kids: Is there anything hotter than the Sun?
Oct 29, 2018 19:30 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science
Curious Kids is a series for children, where we ask experts to answer questions from kids. All questions are welcome: find out how to enter at the bottom. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production...
A Goblin could guide us to a mystery planet thought to exist in the Solar system
Oct 20, 2018 15:25 pm UTC| Insights & Views Science
Out in the depths of the Solar system, astronomers recently discovered a small, icy object, named 2015 TG387. First observed in October 2015, it has been nicknamed The Goblin by its discoverers. It is currently almost...
Google's artificial intelligence finds two new exoplanets missed by human eyes
Dec 15, 2017 08:13 am UTC| Insights & Views Science
Two new exoplanets have been discovered thanks to NASAs collaboration with Googles artificial intelligence (AI). One of those in todays announcement is an eighth planet Kepler-90i found orbiting the Sun-like star...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
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Biden administration tells employers to stop shackling workers with ‘noncompete agreements’
IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects