Vivat Libertas

Well, the last day of February was one hell of a day! As I write this, I've now been awake for over 20 hours. Every single one was worth it. The early bird catches the worm, but the late one misses the coach I stupidly stayed up despite knowing that I'd have to get up at 3. Great decision, Osnat. Really great decision. Anyway, I was woken up by my dutiful (and very annoying) alarm at stupid o'clock in the morning. Now, anaemia is a wonderful thing capable of making you faint and someone  hasn't been taking her tablets regularly for various reasons. Guess who passed out sitting up in bed? Yeah, that was a smart move. But in the end I managed to drag myself out of bed, get dressed, eat and somehow not faint on the way to the Students' Union - the sugar boost (and the caffeine from the Jaffa Cakes) probably helped. I was pretty hyper. Not even 5 and already space banter from a bunch of sleep-deprived nerds — Osnat (@AsViewedBy) February 28, 2015 Pretty mu...

Have you ever wished you could control a space telescope? Stupid question; of course  you have. Well, maybe just me - but I'm sure at least one other person in the world does, otherwise we wouldn't have ARKYD! You might ask what ARKYD actually is - so I'll try and tell you. Funded by Planetary Resources , a company hoping to mine asteroids in space, it's a fast, light, efficient and relatively high-resolution space telescope. Now, that would be awesome enough in itself for me, because I'm a space nerd. What makes it even more awesome is that its aim is to be the first publicly accessible space telescope, with classrooms, scientists, researchers and even a wastrel like me  all getting a say in what the telescope does, where to point it, and who takes the pictures. In short, science controlled by the public. This is fantastic on so many different levels: firstly, it opens up knowledge. As a nerd, I always have trouble learning more because I come up against ...

I found this tweet about a very beautiful space photo today. The links are well worth clicking on. Ever since I was very little, I've been fascinated by space. It's big, it's beautiful, we still don't know that much about it, it's very very old, and we're just one tiny part of a massive universe. I find it very difficult to explain why I like it so much, so a quote from Paul Erdos might help to explain: "Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is  Beethoven's Ninth Symphony  beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I  know  numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is." But yeah, that's why I like space. It's really helped me as well - because I was so fascinated by space as a child, I got into cosmology and then jumped into theoretical physics, which is now the thing I want to do for the rest of my life. Well, that or mathematical physics. (I know I don't speak much about ei...