The passion that drives Dr Jasper Horrell to do his job every day is inspiring. This humanities student, with no interest in science, was expecting a ridiculously boring lecture on telescopes and stars, radio waves and photographs – but this lecture was exciting.
The passion that drives Dr Jasper Horrell to do his job every day is inspiring. This humanities student, with no interest in science, was expecting a ridiculously boring lecture on telescopes and stars, radio waves and photographs – but this lecture was exciting.
During his speech it was evident how much he loves what he does, but it was when he spoke one-on-one with school children who eagerly asked him questions afterwards that he truly lit up.
“Do you believe in aliens?” one asked. Horrell smiled and explained that he did believe such an extensive universe had a pretty high chance of life existing on them – but not necessarily how Hollywood makes it seem.
Horrell’s lecture, Seeing stars in dirty pictures: Life as a radio astronomer in the Karoo, was prepared by Dr Lindsay Magnus, his colleague who was unable to attend. Horrell, however, was delighted to take his place.
“Even if one person is inspired to go into this area because they slightly know about it, it would open their minds,” he said.
The project is centred in the Karoo and Horrell has been involved in its planning for 12 years. The aim was to build a radio telescope in a remote area.
Today, Square Kilometre Array (SKA) has 64 dishes arranged like an alien crop-field from Signs that takes, receives, and processes some of the most ground breaking images and data South Africa has ever had from the wonders of space.
Its initiative has made South Africa part of the mainstream of the scientific world, providing massive opportunities for the future development of the field.
At first sight, the blurry – “dirty” – images of exploding stars are confusing to look at. The radio telescope doesn’t take photos like phones take selfies, but operates through a complex process that has no lens, and a whole lot of missing pixels.
What is fascinating is that when the images are processed, and cleared, the audience realises they are looking at a star that is so far away it is beyond comprehension.
Even more thrilling: because of that distance, not only does the image travel through space and distance, but also time. An image received by this telescope is so far away, and so far back into the past that it might not exist anymore due to the relationship between time and space.
This mind-blowing concept is heightened by the exciting topic of black holes. What was merely a scientific theory, introduced in 1783 by John Michel as dark stars, and then highly developed by Stephen Hawking (and numerously used by the science fiction genre) was now on a projector against a white canvas in front of the audience.
Horrell’s face lights up explaining the thrill of looking into a galaxy, seeing a black hole and atoms getting sucked it, jets coming out of it – a picture of a dynamic, moving, living universe.
“I think you can look at it and, if you truly know that you don’t know what it is, that’s what makes it interesting,” he says.
