Meet the scientists!

Some of the chemicals in your body can exist in two forms that are almost exactly the same, except that they are mirror images of each other, just like your hands are both hands but are also mirror images. In your body though, only one of the forms is found! I use lasers, and something called a synchrotron – basically a big particle accelerator that makes light – to recreate the conditions in space to see if light from stars can cause this. We could have light from stars to thank for life!

There is not one routine for me – as I do some experiments in my lab in Nottingham, and some experiments at a lab in Paris.

In Nottingham, I usually get in at 8 am and make a nice cup of tea. I then go and check that the lab is okay and turn on the lasers. Then I can either spend the whole day trying to get the experiments to work by slightly changing where the lasers are going – it is very difficult because I have to get 2 lasers to overlap in a tiny little space of about 1mm! Once this is done, the easy happens. I leave the whole thing recording for at least an hour and go have have a well earned break!

In Paris, my days (and nights) are a lot more hectic! Here I am working at the synchrotron. This spins electrons round in big circles very fast – almost as fast as light moves in fact. When the electrons turn around corners the give off light, and we use this light to look at our chemicals! I only get 3 days to do my experiments here as demand is high for other people to do experiments. So I usually get only a few hours sleep every night whilst I work my socks off to get as much data as I can. If everything is working well this means lots of sitting around making sure everything is working well. If something is broken it means rushing around like a mad man trying to fix it as soon as I can!

I would like to organise a science fair for local Nottingham schools. There would be demonstrations and hands on activities for people to explore different areas of science and how it can be related to every day objects that you know.