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Meet: Jack Ireland
Solar Physicist
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
A Beginning
"So why are you working in solar physics?", asked the mythical
interviewer.
"Well, I enjoy the research process, so...", says me.
Pause. "Is that all, and is that a good enough reason?"
"I don't know. When I was finishing my Ph.D. I applied
for a lot of different kinds of jobs, all research, some based at universities
and others based in industry. I got offered a position in solar physics and I
took it."
That's basically how it happened. I had applied for a whole
bunch of jobs and I got an offer from two of my applications and both of those
were in solar physics. One was at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and
the other was in the University of Birmingham in England. Maybe some background
would be useful at this point so let us peer through the mists of time to...
Around the Time I was Seven or so...
...I
got a book that described, well, basically, a whole lot of Earth and space science.
I was interested in all that kind of stuff. What got me about this book was that
it said that there were four states of matter--solid, liquid, gas and one that
my teachers never told me about, plasma. So I knew something the teachers didn't
know, which always makes a seven year old feel smart. Now I can't say that this
inspired me to go into solar physics, but it certainly is one of my earliest scientific
memories.
An Education
So I finished
primary school and then secondary school (if these terms are unfamiliar it's because
I was born and grew up in Scotland and have only recently moved to the United
States, but more about that later)--basically kindergarten and high school and
then went on to university. When I left school, I knew I liked physics so I began
my studies at the "Yooni" (slang for university, and in particular Glasgow University
in Scotland). I'm glad I did because the jobs I've had have sent me round the
world and I've met some interesting people along the way.
In fact, I liked physics so much I decided I would do a
Ph.D. as well, again at Glasgow University. A Ph.D. is very, very different from
any other kind of studying. For a start, you more or less learn everything by
yourself--usually nobody else is doing exactly the same kind of work as you, and
so you have to be more independent. Also, there are no tests to sit (other than
the final oral presentation, where you have to defend and explain your work to
a panel of experts) and so the only way you know you are making any progress is
by talking to your supervisor (a person who guides you through your work) and
by checking up on what everyone else around the world is doing. A Ph.D. also gives
you the chance to find out something no one ever knew before, and that can be
exciting!
Research
Having done my
Ph.D. I knew I wanted to stay in some form of research. I like the process of
research. It is immensely satisfying to notice something that no one has seen
before and explore it fully. Science is a very creative discipline--if you see
something that you think is new then trying to come up with an acceptable explanation
really tests your creativity and stretches your thinking, or at least it should.
It's also fun to see the personalities that go behind the latest thinking. Very
often the person backing a particular theory is as important as the theory itself.
Personalities play a far bigger role in the development of science than outside
appearances suggest.
My work in solar physics looks at the coronal heating problem,
namely, why is the surface of the Sun only a few thousand degrees Kelvin while
the outlying corona (the bit you see during a total solar eclipse) is often millions
of degrees Kelvin.
I worked at St. Andrews in Scotland for three and a half
years, pursuing answers to the coronal heating problem by studying theoretical
physics and analysing data from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO,
a Sun research spacecraft located 1 million miles away from the Earth, between
us and the Sun.)
When I finished there I took a European Space Agency (ESA,
the European equivalent of NASA) Fellowship at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center,
where I currently work. Again, I do theoretical and observational solar physics
aimed at solving the coronal heating problem. But this time I get to live in a
foreign country for a while. This too is very interesting--I've been mistaken
for being English, Irish, German, Dutch and even Russian but no one guesses Scotland,
unless they've met Scottish people before. And nobody understands my accent on
the telephone!
I'm far more involved in taking observations of the Sun
now; in fact I am coordinating observations using the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer
onboard SOHO with some ground-based observations taken during the time of the
eclipse. So even although I won't see the eclipse I am still involved in a small
way.
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