Profile

I live in Jersey, in the countryside. I love to go outside and just look at the night sky. I also have a telescope so I can see planets and stars and galaxies a bit closer, which is really amazing.

In the mornings I work for a law firm, which is more fun than you might think 🙂 The rest of the time I am studying for a PhD. I can do this from home, rather than having to be at the university, which is very nice. It works out OK because I do most of my work on the computer, as well as a lot of reading.

I do lots of reading for fun, too. My favourite subjects are science fiction (especially when the science is right) and things that make me laugh. My favourite movies and TV shows are the same.

Trying to understand the climate on Mars and looking at how the climate has changed is very interesting because Mars today is very different to how it was in the past. I think my work is very interesting because I run programs on a computer to show how the weather on Mars behaves. And because the computer program is very clever I can make it to show what might have been happening on Mars millions and billions of years ago.

Mars may have been very wet a long time ago but today it looks like a desert planet. But it also seems to have lots of ice all over the planet, but some of it is covered in sand and dust. Mars has ice caps at the poles, just like Earth, and it also has ice deep in craters where it is very cold. And there may even be a lake under the ground near the south pole! So trying to find out why all the water seems to have disappeared from the surface or turned to ice is really interesting.

Here are some pictures of Mars – I think they’re amazing! They are from ESA (1) and NASA (2,3).

Korolev crater is near the north pole. It is full of water ice. You can tell where the sun shines on the rim of the crater by where there is ice and where it has been melted.

Opportunity rover was on Mars for a long time and saw lots of clouds. These are icy clouds very high up in the sky.

This dune on Mars isn’t really blue. The scientists gave it that colour in the picture to show that is made up of different material to the dunes below it. And because scientists like to have fun too!

The computer programs I use can be set to show what the climate is like on Mars today and also what it might have been like in the past. So first I set up the programme to show what weather on Mars might be like today. Then I compared it to what the rovers on Mars and the equipment on orbiters going around Mars see, because they can see what is actually happening on Mars. And my computer programs were very close to what the equipment actually on Mars sees.

So then I change the computer programmes to settings that we think might be what Mars was like in the past and then run them again. I look at what the computer tells me and make graphs and pictures from the information which makes it easier to see what is happening. It is very interesting to compare the information from the past and from today to see all the changes.