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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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