Our group’s member Dr Andreas Papadopoulos talked to the school’s fourth and sixth grade students about how he got involved in Astronomy & Astrophysics. He explained how modern astronomy works, compared to the time that Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein made their marks in modern astronomy. He introduced the concept of research in astronomy with the use of high performance computers and presented some of the newest scientific breakthroughs, like the hunt for the ninith planet, the robotic rovers on planet Mars, the recent flyby of New Horizons around Pluto and Prof. Stephen Hawking’s new initiative to send a space-mission to the nearest star (alpha Centauri) in just 20 years of fly-time.

The fairly-large crowd of students were eager to ask numerous questions like: how do we know what happened at the Big Bang, how and when our Solar system was formed, what will happen when the Sun runs out of fuel, what is a black hole and how it works, how many stars live in a galaxy and how many galaxies exist in the Universe etc.  

A guided tour of the speaker to some of the school’s classrooms, revealed the great enthusiasm of the students about space and astronomy, as the wall-boards were full of students’ projects like: models of our Solar system, article about Planet-X, robots made of recycled materials etc (as seen in the pictures).

The students, as well as scientists, were producing more questions with time, which unfortunatly run out at 13:05 and the speaker was “saved by the bell”! The speaker promised to visit again the school in the near future, with more time spend on Q&A’s.

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