Profile

I live in Southampton – I studied physics and astronomy at University.  I study super-massive black holes at the centres of distant galaxies outside our own Milky Way.

When I’m not researching, I love to play sport – some of my favourites are going for long runs, playing squash and swimming.  My other favourite hobbies are cooking (and in particular baking – I can’t say what my favourite cake is though, because I don’t think there’s a cake I wouldn’t eat!)  and all things technology.  In particular, I really enjoying cooking and eating vegetarian food, and recently made some veggie pasties!

I study super-massive black holes at the centres of galaxies far outside the Milky Way.  These black holes can be more massive than a billion times our own Sun.  The huge gravitational pull of these systems captures vast amounts of matter, that can’t escape and end up being ‘eaten’.  The stuff falling into the black hole gets very hot and ends up emitting lots of radiation.

Some of these destructive black hole systems are hidden behind thick clouds of gas and dust, which absorb the weaker radiation being emitted.  However, the highest energy X-ray radiation can be able to pierce through these clouds, if they aren’t too thick, and travel across space to be detected by X-ray satellites orbiting around the Earth.

My work then analyses the different X-ray detections from these satellites, to be able to figure out what the hidden black hole really looks like.

I typically start my day with a jog around Southampton.  I then head to work, where I spend a lot of time programming to solve problems related to my research, such as being able to determine what different hidden black holes truly ‘look’ like.

After work, I love to cook dinner and every now and then, bake some sort of cake.  My profile picture contains one of my recent cakes – an ‘Anti-gravity sweetie cake’!