LISTEN: https://soundcloud.com/astrophiz/gravitational-waves-lisa-primordial-black-holes-laura-burn-astrophiz-244

In Astrophiz Episode 244, host Brendan O’Brien sits down with award-winning astrophysicist Laura Burn, a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland. Discover how gravitational waves allow us to “hear” the universe and how cutting-edge computational models are preparing the scientific community for LISA—humanity’s upcoming first space-based gravitational wave observatory.

Laura, recipient of the prestigious Kerr Prize at the Australasian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, dives deep into her current research investigating primordial black holes as a dark matter candidate and the gravitational wave signatures they produce around supermassive black holes.

Tune in as Laura shares her inspiring academic journey from the UK to New Zealand working with Professor Richard Easther, her experiences as a planetarium presenter and physics educator, the impact of artificial intelligence on gravitational wave data analysis, and her passionate advocacy for valuing teaching excellence in higher education.

Chapters

• Welcome and Acknowledgement of Country
• Meet Laura Burn: LISA, Merging Supermassive Black Holes and the Kerr Prize
• Growing Up in Birmingham: How Laura First Became Interested in Space
• From Exeter to Auckland: Choosing a PhD with Professor Richard Easther
• What Are Gravitational Waves? Hearing the Universe with LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and LISA
• Current Research: Primordial Black Holes as a Dark Matter Candidate
• Open Questions in Gravitational Wave Physics: LISA Data Analysis and the Global Fit
• Gravitational Waves 101: Turning General Relativity into Code for LISA
• Mental Gymnastics: Modelling Clusters of Tiny Black Holes
• Science Education Research and Planetarium Presenting
• Balancing a PhD, Teaching, Equity and Advocacy in Physics
• How Laura Does Her Best Thinking: Coffee, Focus and Swimming
• AI and Machine Learning in Gravitational Wave Data Analysis
• Recharging: Hiking, Camping, Dark Skies and Birdwatching in New Zealand
• Rant or Rave: Why Universities Should Value Teaching as Much as Research
• What to Watch: Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Farewell and Astrophiz Sign-Off

Transcript

Welcome and Acknowledgement of Country

Brendan: Welcome to episode 244 of Astrophiz.

We acknowledge Australia’s first astronomers, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the land we are on, and this episode is produced on Yorta Yorta and Pangarang Country.

Join us each fortnight as we sit down with the world’s leading space scientists to discover exactly how the universe works.

And right now, you’re invited to zoom over with me to Aotearoa, which is also known as beautiful New Zealand.

Specifically, we’re calling in on a fabulous astrophysicist and PhD candidate at the University of Auckland.

So it’s my pleasure to welcome Laura Burn.

SFX: Morse code snippet

Brendan: Hello, Laura…

Laura: Hi, Brendan…

Meet Laura Burn: LISA, Merging Supermassive Black Holes and the Kerr Prize

Brendan: Welcome to Astrophiz, Laura.

Laura models the gravitational waves thrown off by merging supermassive black holes. Now, this is ahead of the upcoming LISA mission, humanity’s first gravitational wave observatory in space.

Laura recently took out the Kerr Prize for Best Student Talk at the Australasian Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation. Laura is also a passionate planetarium presenter and university astronomy educator, and we are very lucky to have her right here now.

So thanks for speaking with us today, Laura.

Laura: Yeah, it’s great to be here. I’m excited for the talk.

Growing Up in Birmingham: How Laura First Became Interested in Space

Brendan: Thank you. Look, that’s great.

So before we talk about your current research work on gravitational waves, can you first tell us where you were born and grew up, and how you first became interested in science or space?

Laura: Yeah, I’m originally from the UK and I grew up in a place called Birmingham. It’s a pretty big city, sort of right in the middle, so as far from the ocean as you can kind of get in the UK.

And I always wonder how I did get interested in science or space. I think it just sort of happened through school.

My mum was never interested in science very much, but something about space… I was a kid who had the little glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, and I think I watched a lot of documentaries as a kid, like Bill Nye and Brian Cox, and I think something about that just really captured my attention.

From Exeter to Auckland: Choosing a PhD with Professor Richard Easther

Brendan: Beautiful. Thank you.

So after completing your integrated Master’s degree at the University of Exeter in the UK, you were focusing on gravitational waves and particle physics, and then you moved across the globe to the University of Auckland to pursue your PhD.

Now, for our early-career researchers listening, could you tell us how that move came about and what drew you to Auckland to work with Professor Richard Easther, and how your interest in gravitational waves was first sparked?

Laura: Yeah, so I completed my degree during COVID. So for two years of my degree, I did, you know, sort of in a room online.

And I think by the time I finished my Master’s, I was feeling that I wasn’t quite done with academia and with research. I feel like my Master’s degree had given me a little taste of research and I wanted to continue pursuing that and figure out if I wanted to stay in academia.

I think at the time I was very set on staying in research and that’s what I wanted to do.

So doing a PhD was really the next logical step for that.

So after my Master’s, I was working for a while. I thought I wanted to work. I wanted a little bit of a break while I figured things out.

So during that break, I was working as a bar manager. It’s always a little bit of… [laughs] quite different to what I do now.

But I’ve been working in hospitality and bars for quite a few years. And then, for that full-time year or so, I worked as a bar manager.

It’s always… part of my two truths and a lie is that I’m trained in axe-throwing, because the bar was an axe-throwing bar. So I had to be trained in it and be able to train people to do axe throwing.

So that’s always a fun part I like to throw in, like, an icebreaker.

So I was doing that, and during that time I was applying for the PhDs, and I figured I wanted to go abroad.

Actually, during my degree I was meant to do a year abroad in Sydney, but of course it was COVID, so unfortunately I didn’t get to go. And I think I wanted to… you know, I still wanted to have that experience that I didn’t get to have.

So I was pretty set on moving abroad to do my PhD.

I just didn’t know where at the time. So I was just sort of, you know, looking all over the internet. And I was… sort of finding PhDs can be quite tricky. There’s no, like, one website you can use. It’s mostly just, you know, digging around, looking for supervisors you might want to work with.

So I was mostly looking at two different areas. So either particle physics or gravitational waves.

So I did gravitational waves for my Master’s research, and I thought it was pretty interesting.

I’d done a particle physics internship at CERN, and I knew I really liked particle physics. So I thought I’d end up there.

But then I did gravitational waves. I was like, “Oh, actually, this is pretty cool,” and we discovered gravitational waves not long before I completed my degree.

And it sort of just worked out that I got this PhD with Richard. And there was funding and, you know, funding is unfortunately the main thing you need when you look for a PhD.

So sometimes the decision gets made for you a little bit on where you go. But I was really excited about moving to New Zealand.

I’m really into hiking and nature. It was literally as far away from the UK as I can get, so it was quite a big move.

I had a really great talk with Richard when I was first interested in the PhD, and he basically gave me a little pep talk of, “Like, I know you like to do particle physics, but in terms of what is at the forefront of physics right now is gravitational waves. There’s a lot more detectors being built, a lot more interest, a lot more things we can discover.”

Whereas particle physics, maybe, you know, until we build a bigger Hadron Collider, I don’t know how much more experimental evidence we can get.

That’s essentially the pep talk I got. So that was pretty convincing in terms of looking at my own career and seeing where I can go.

Brendan: Sounds great.

Okay, and it’s quite an achievement to study and survive COVID at the same time. It was tough for everyone.

Okay, so the plan for today is to explore the basic physical principles behind your work and look at the experimental or theoretical tools that you use, and then discuss where your research is heading next.

How does that sound, Laura?

Laura: Yeah, that sounds great.

What Are Gravitational Waves? Hearing the Universe with LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA and LISA

Brendan: Okay, that’s cool.

So first, let’s take a quick look at your research trajectory. Your PhD focuses on computational gravitational wave physics.

Now, we have done a number of episodes on gravitational waves, but for non-experts like me who are listening, what are gravitational waves and what sort of cosmic events produce them? And what specific questions are your computational simulations trying to answer?

Laura: Yes. So gravitational waves are basically little ripples in what we call spacetime.

So I always like to say that we’re hearing the universe.

With light, you know, we can look at different types of light. We can look at X-rays, we can look at UV, visible light, and we can look at the universe in different ways. We’ve learned a lot about the universe through many different telescopes that look in different types of light.

I see gravitational waves as a sort of audio counterpart, that it’s kind of like we’re hearing the universe this time.

So these little waves are actually space being sort of stretched and squeezed as they come through, and they’re created by accelerating massive objects. And you need really, really massive objects for these.

So black holes, neutron stars are your best objects to look at for those.

But technically anything with mass produces gravitational waves when it accelerates. But the ones we can detect are going to be the ones from black holes.

And even the ones from merging black holes, they essentially stretch and squeeze spacetime by less than the width of a proton.

So we’re really trying to detect the tiniest, tiniest little ripples in spacetime.

What am I trying to answer?

There’s been a lot of work in this field since gravitational waves were first discovered in 2015, 100 years after Einstein proposed them theoretically, which is quite beautiful… almost exactly 100 years from speculation to discovery.

So since 2015, we’ve discovered over 300 events.

And at the moment, we’re restricted to a sort of small part of the frequencies that we could detect based on the detectors we have.

So in the same way, light comes in many different frequencies. Gravitational waves also come in many different frequencies.

To get to lower frequencies that we can detect, we have to build bigger detectors. So this is where LISA comes in.

So LISA is obviously a gravitational wave detector in space, and it’s going to be way bigger than what we have currently on the ground, like LIGO and Virgo and KAGRA.

So the ground-based detectors are about five kilometres long. LISA will be two and a half million kilometres long. So quite an upgrade.

And with that, we can detect much lower frequency events.

And so low-frequency events will be things like merging supermassive black holes, any gravitational waves that were formed in the universe, and possibly events that we don’t expect as well.

And so there’s a sort of big race on before LISA launches to start modelling many potential events we’ll have. And we’re going to get an impressive amount of data that’s all going to be overlapping.

And so part of my work is more based on looking at what types of events we might get, what kind of models we put together, and whether the signals will be bright enough or loud enough for us to detect them.

Current Research: Primordial Black Holes as a Dark Matter Candidate

Brendan: Fantastic. It sounds like you’re fingerprinting the universe. Thank you.

Look, let’s drill down a bit further into your current work. What are your current research projects right now? And, yeah, could you tell us what tools or numerical models, what supercomputers or what instruments are you relying on most heavily to carry out this work?

Laura: Yeah, so I’ve actually taken a little bit of a U-turn in my research at the moment.

I do still look at gravitational waves, but this time I’m looking at a candidate for dark matter called primordial black holes.

So these are black holes that would have formed in the early universe through just collapse of places that are a little bit overdense in the early universe that directly form black holes.

So these are theoretical. We don’t know if they exist.

Hopefully part of my work is advancing knowing if we can actually detect these or if they actually exist. But these are a candidate for dark matter, and since we haven’t detected a dark matter particle in, you know, the last sort of decade or so, there’s been a lot more work looking at these sort of smaller black holes that are potentially candidates that are all, or part of the dark matter we know exists in the universe.

And so since we have these tiny black holes in, say, the galaxy, my work is now looking at these tiny black holes whizzing around the supermassive black hole in the centre of galaxies.

So I’ve started with our own galaxy. That’s Sagittarius A*, that’s the supermassive black hole at the centre. I’ve also been looking at other galaxies as well.

And the idea is that we know that dark matter sort of clumps towards the centre of galaxies.

And so my work is essentially looking at any gravitational waves formed or produced by these little black holes going around a big hole, essentially. And by looking at that, we can essentially figure out that if we could detect this with LISA or other instruments, if this would help constrain what dark matter is, what kind of matter it is.

So that’s the general idea.

And as we said, I’m a computational physicist, so I’m mostly just still at my computer and code mostly…

I work with the language Python. And I don’t actually work much with the actual waveforms of the signal, mostly because the waveforms of the signal of a really tiny black hole around a big one is quite complicated.

We’re mostly looking at sort of order-of-magnitude estimates. If you have loads of these tiny black holes, you can sort of statistically represent them as almost like a fluid or a gas, and then using that to just look at the order-of-magnitude signal-to-noise ratios.

So it’s nothing, honestly, too intense. So I don’t need supercomputers or anything like that.

Mostly it’s looking at these sort of initial different models. But yeah, it’s all computational.

Open Questions in Gravitational Wave Physics: LISA Data Analysis and the Global Fit

Brendan: Wow. I think your brain could be a supercomputer. Thank you. Wow, that’s awesome.

Okay. Look, what is making this specific domain of gravitational wave physics… what’s really exciting in that field now? What are the big open questions that researchers like you or your colleagues… what questions are you trying to answer today?

Laura: Yeah, I think there’s quite a few different groups of people who are trying to answer questions that all sort of interlink with each other.

So my colleagues in the statistics department here, they focus a lot looking at the sort of data analysis for LISA.

At the moment, we actually don’t have a… the LISA Consortium, which is a sort of big group that oversees the mission, we don’t currently have a full pipeline on, once the detector’s in space and we start getting data, how we’re actually going to disentangle all that data.

And so something that they’re focused on, well, a lot of people are focused on, is what’s called the global fit, which is basically having enough templates of gravitational waves that we can take all that data and start sort of piecing out the bits that we know and matching templates to it.

So that’s a really big piece of work that needs to be done, of course, before it’s launched. So hopefully we’ve got about 10 years to make that happen.

So data analysis with gravitational waves is particularly important. And so anything done with detectors we currently have, like LIGO, is going to help with that sort of endeavour.

What I sort of do is more… I guess I’m maybe more of an astrophysicist or a cosmologist, and looking at these models and basically looking at what models are valid.

And so it’s almost like I could pass those models to the statisticians who can, you know, make the waveforms and test them against a sort of noise level of detector.

And so, you know, being able to come up with models about the galaxy and how, you know, how black holes behave and what we could get out of them is very important.

There’s also plenty of people who are interested in the early universe. So that would be like my supervisor and some of my other research group look at the early universe during, like, a period of inflation and any signals we might get from gravitational waves through that.

So there’s really, like, many different subgroups, and we’re all working on, you know, sort of the big picture of the universe.

Of course, a big open question is: what is dark matter?

So that’s really where I am right now, with looking at whether primordial black holes are dark matter and whether we can use any gravitational waves they might produce to help answer the question.

Gravitational Waves 101: Turning General Relativity into Code for LISA

Brendan: Thank you, Laura.

Now, let’s see if we can do Gravitational Waves 101 in under three minutes.

You mentioned these cataclysmic explosions. When black holes or neutron stars collide, they send these ripples through the fabric of spacetime itself.

How do we turn such complex and powerful physics into code to digitally replicate these massive cosmic collisions? And why are your computational models — you mentioned LISA — why are these models so vital for detectors like LISA to make sense of the real signals from these cataclysmic events?

Laura: Yeah, that’s a good question.

So most of the sort of foundation of maths that we put into the code comes from general relativity. There’s obviously been a lot of work done then, but really the basics of it, of getting the gravitational wave equation, does come from general relativity.

Once you’ve got that, you can really do a lot of things.

So a lot of people look at actual wave functions, or like the actual sort of wave of the gravitational wave. But for me, I’m kind of looking at how loud generally the signal is.

So most of my work comes from, you know, stuff done in the last sort of, like, the… maybe 50 years, I would say, looking at specific different orbits.

So whether your orbit is a circle or if it’s more of an oval or if it doesn’t connect at all.

So I look at quite a lot of hyperbolic orbits. And so rather than the actual waveform of the gravitational wave itself, I’m kind of looking at how generally loud the signal is.

So if you think about lots of different waveforms and you sort of add them all up and you get generally how loud the thing is.

So luckily for me, that makes my code a lot easier, that I don’t have to actually model these waveforms. I’ve just sort of already added them all up and look at generally how loud they are.

Because really, how loud they are is going to be very important for looking at detectors like LISA.

And so by doing that, we can have a look whether the sort of model we’ve made from a supermassive black hole with lots of little black holes, whether that signal would be loud enough within a detector like LISA for LISA to even bother trying to look at it, basically.

So if it’s not loud enough, then we know that we are not going to expect a signal like LISA.

So it’s really making a lot of predictions for these future detectors, because otherwise it’s going to be a little bit like searching for a needle in a haystack if we don’t have a prediction of where the needle might be in the haystack.

Mental Gymnastics: Modelling Clusters of Tiny Black Holes

Brendan: Beautiful. Thank you.

Now, we know that science and simulation codes don’t always run smoothly. What’s driving you crazy at the moment? What are you doing mental gymnastics over? What’s going on? What’s exciting? What’s driving you mad, Laura?

Laura: Something I really love about code is that, you know, even if I make a silly mistake, you know, nothing… there’s no repercussions really for me. You know, I’m not going to destroy the universe or anything.

So at least when I do make silly mistakes with my code, it’s never a big deal. I usually just spend the day sort of scratching my head.

In terms of what I’m working on now, I’m looking at, again, different ways to sort of simulate loads of these tiny black holes and different models that we can use for that.

So I don’t think I’m really stuck with anything right now. I’m just working through some things and I’m sort of… I don’t really know where I’m heading, but I know sort of where I need to go.

And I’m currently looking at different models and different papers out there, and I’ve done sort of similar work that I could use in my own work.

And interestingly, right now, I’ve found some models that have actually come from the sort of stellar community.

So I’ve been looking at models of lots of stars in a cluster, because in the end, like, a cluster of stars can be very similar to a cluster of primordial black holes.

In a very, you know, in a very simple way, is that you’ve just got a lot of what we’d say is point particles, you know, in a sphere or a disk.

So it’s really interesting to see how you can use models from sort of completely different fields that will also work in your own field.

I think that’s really cool. It means I get to read a lot more, the more widely… the sort of very narrow one-track you end up when you do a PhD, which is narrowly looking at this one thing that you suddenly become an expert on.

So yeah, at the moment, I’m sort of, like, looking through different models and figuring out if this model would be valid to what we want to do.

Once we figure that out, we can start looking at if the gravitational waves from this model would be detectable in LISA.

Science Education Research and Planetarium Presenting

Brendan: Wow, that’s great to hear. Everything’s on track. Meanwhile, my head is spinning.

Okay. Let’s take our propeller hats off for a moment.

You’re also involved in science education research alongside Associate Professor Maurice Cheng, and you’re exploring how people learn and engage with science.

Does your work as a planetarium presenter beneath the dome influence or inform how you break down these complex models? How do you break down these astrophysics topics for your undergraduate students and the general public?

Laura: Yeah, I think a lot of it really feeds into the same thing. And the more I do it, I think the more practised and confident I am at explaining things.

I think in the end, if I read something that I don’t understand, then I really have to sit with it until I understand it in a very simple way.

And so actually doing the work I do with Maurice is actually looking at botany and plant sciences and looking at science education research. So something very different to astronomy or anything.

But, you know, I’m a bit of… I have quite a lot of houseplants at home. So I do like all, you know, a lot of aspects of science.

I was really someone who couldn’t figure out what I really wanted to do. Like, I really love physics. At the same time, I really like psychology and I really like philosophy.

And actually science education research does bring a lot of it together.

It also includes my passion of talking to people about science in general.

So the work I do with Maurice is looking at how we can use the media to inform science education and biology in secondary or in schools.

I use [that] as sort of for my teaching and for talking to people about general concepts.

I think I just always want people to understand in a simple way. Like, I’d really hate for someone to nod along and actually have no clue what I’m talking about.

So I’m always trying to really make sure people understand how we like to connect with people.

And I think working as a planetarium presenter was really my first avenue into this.

And I think looking at where I was when I started that job, sort of nearly almost three years ago, I feel like I’ve come so far since that first show I did, where I was very nervous and, you know, you’re in the dark and you’ve got to control the planetarium as well.

And I think it’s really helped me grow in confidence just as a person as well.

And, you know, it’s interesting as well. There’s aspects of comedy, aspects of sort of improv — improv as well — in doing that.

So I think humour is really important for learning. So I always try and put some humour in.

Even if I don’t get many laughs, it’s okay.

Balancing a PhD, Teaching, Equity and Advocacy in Physics

Brendan: Thank you. Learning new things is always awesome. Thanks, Laura.

Now, this is a nice segue.

You’re a professional teaching fellow. You’re lecturing in general education, in introductory astronomy and foundational physics, and you served as the Auckland University Women in Science Advocacy Executive while sitting on the Physics Equity Committee.

How do you balance those demands of a high-level PhD, juggling all those models, and how do you balance that with the demands of teaching and advocacy and outreach?

Why is equity work so vital in physics right now?

And Laura, do you ever get to sleep?

I’m sorry. There were three questions in there. I think you may just want to answer one of them.

Over to you, Laura.

Laura: I’m definitely working on the sleep.

Well, I am very much a (sleep) person… I really need eight hours’ sleep. Otherwise, I’m really not able to function the next day.

Like, I can maybe answer that sort of, like, altogether.

I think that you really can’t do just one of these things when you’re in… you know, there are plenty of people who focus on research.

But in the end, you know, if you want to stay in academia, you’re going to have to teach.

And I think, you know, it’s everyone’s responsibility to also think about, or at least think about, equity work and how you can, you know, improve your classes and even your research to include as many people as possible.

So yeah, I really love my teaching.

And at the moment I was teaching general astronomy and I sort of had a class of, like, 300 students. And, you know, it was quite a… I really had to prepare for each lecture. It really had to be quite polished for each hour.

The class I’m teaching now is a foundational physics class. They actually only have nine students, and it’s really great because I really get to know them one-on-one and I can really sort of tailor my teaching to what they want to work on.

So it’s really nice. It’s almost like a little tutorial.

So it’s been really great going sort of from one to the other.

And I’ve been really trying to let my equity work and my advocacy work, outreach and science communication, really trying to inform my teaching.

So I think it all sort of… it all comes together in one way.

How Laura Does Her Best Thinking: Coffee, Focus and Swimming

Brendan: Beautiful.

Okay, look, it sounds like an impossible juggling act to me.

So when you’re immersed in multiple models and simulations and working out these complex physical problems in other parts of the cosmos, galaxies far, far away, how do you do your best thinking, Laura?

Can we draw back the curtain on the way the mind works for a gravitational wave astrophysicist?

What environments or routines, or what are the requirements that help you process the data and make all of these decisions and arrive at new insights?

For me, chocolate and caffeine are my go-tos. How do you do your best thinking, Laura?

Laura: I think that’s something I’m still learning, but I think I’ve sort of figured it down.

So I was actually recently, well, within the past couple of years, diagnosed with ADHD. So that’s really sort of changed my outlook on how I work.

And maybe I’m a little bit kinder to myself now, which is good.

So I mostly just try and remove any barriers that would distract me.

So, you know, basically always, I always come into the office. Like, I try… I don’t really work at home. I really try and have that, like, work-life balance as much as I can.

You know, I’m definitely a coffee drinker, so always, you know, I get in, I’m checking my emails, I have a coffee, and that sort of, you know, gives me a little… a little pick-me-up to start the day.

And then I sort of get into a harder thing.

But I think it’s partly why I like to do a lot, because if I can’t focus or I get bored of doing what… then I can do my other things.

So I’m like frustrated with a coding problem, I can do some work on teaching or I can do something else, which really breaks up my day, but keeps me productive.

So having lots of different things can help.

And honestly, with coding, if I get stuck on something, usually taking some time away from it helps.

So I think I’ve had my best thoughts when I’ve just been… I tend to swim in the mornings. So sometimes I’m swimming and I’m like, “Oh, I think I know how to fix it now.”

So I think leaving my conscious mind to work on it is sometimes very good to me.

AI and Machine Learning in Gravitational Wave Data Analysis

Brendan: Beautiful. Okay. Thank you.

Look, AI is rapidly changing how we analyse these massive scientific data sets.

You mentioned signal-to-noise ratios earlier and pulling information out of really complex data.

Would you like to give us your take on what’s happening with AI at the moment in your field?

Laura: Yeah, so machine learning has been used for a very long time in many aspects of physics.

Do you remember that one of the last Nobel Prizes was for machine learning?

And yeah, I think in terms of the gravitational wave data analysis, I know a lot of my colleagues use machine learning to continue to develop templates and to sort of train models to figure out what… you know, to figure out whether something is a signal or not.

And with how much, as you said, how much data we get, I think this is very, very important to do.

It’s not something I use in my current work, but it’s something I’ve used in the past and can be very, very helpful when you’re dealing with a lot of data.

So, you know, I think that’s really important.

Since we’re sort of living in a time of, you know, people using large language models, which is a sort of different kind of AI, I think there’s a place for that.

I think the main thing, which is… well, I also say to my students, is understanding how large language models work. It’s really important to be able to use them.

You know, you always need to know how a tool works. You need to know its limitations so you can use it effectively.

So in terms of that side, I think that’s sort of my stance: that, you know, we can use it. We just need to be careful about it.

We need to figure out that we still understand what is going on.

So yeah, I think that’s mostly my take.

Recharging: Hiking, Camping, Dark Skies and Birdwatching in New Zealand

Brendan: Beautiful. Okay. Thanks, Laura.

What are some of the things outside of your prodigious workload that regularly re-energise you, apart from coffee? What is bringing you great joy?

Laura: I think I said earlier that I really like nature.

So a lot of time on the weekends, I like to go on a hike or I like to go camping.

It’s slowly getting a bit warmer here in New Zealand as we’re sort of touching spring, I feel. So I’ve been camping again recently and I think I really needed that.

We’re sort of halfway through the semester here. So I took a little break last week and went camping and that really… that really energised me.

You know, sort of going off-grid for a week can be quite good.

It’s always a great opportunity as well that I can go and, like, actually look at the stars and look at an unpolluted sky, because the sky is not great in central Auckland.

So I got to go down and be in a nice dark-sky zone and have a look at the stars, which I don’t get to see very often.

So that’s very re-energising.

And then, yeah, I quite like birdwatching as well. So going and looking for birds is something I do quite regularly.

So yeah, anything outside is great.

Rant or Rave: Why Universities Should Value Teaching as Much as Research

Brendan: Beautiful.

And New Zealand is a perfect place for our overseas listeners. Get to New Zealand. The country in New Zealand is beautiful.

I was there recently. I went to some of the dark-sky sites there. And, of course, I arranged it so I was big… and this was stupid. It turns out that I was at dark-sky sites while there was a full moon, of course.

Now, Laura, finally, the mic is all yours.

You’ve got the opportunity now to give us your favourite rant or rave, whether it’s about the challenges we face in science or career paths, or what’s happening in equity.

We need more diversity in science. What’s happening in science communication? Or perhaps you’d like to tell us about a fundamental quest for new knowledge.

Rant or rave, the floor is all yours, Laura.

Laura: Yeah, there’s a lot there I could talk about.

I think I’ll go with something I’ve been thinking more about recently as I’m sort of getting towards the end of my PhD and figuring out what I’m doing next.

So, you know, a lot of people will go and do a postdoc, and the postdoc will be basically 100% research. It is a bit like a PhD, but you’re really leading your own research.

And, you know, after that then it’s… you go out and you hunt for a permanent position at a university, and you end up having to move across the world again, you know, in the hunt for this.

And, you know, there’s a lot about that I could complain about.

I think the main thing is that at a lot of universities across the world there’s not a lot of chance to get to a permanent position through teaching.

So there’s a lot of focus on research, and then, you know, you do enough research as a postdoc and then eventually you get tenure, you get a full-time position.

And then after that, as you’re in a full-time position, you will have to do some teaching.

So it’s like you can get to a full-time position through research, but there’s not really much opportunity to get there through just teaching.

And I think it’s a shame that a lot of universities don’t appreciate teaching in that way.

That does seem to be changing, potentially here in Auckland and in other places.

But I think there is this big focus on research, of getting grants, you know, bringing that money and that sort of prestige, and teaching sometimes feels a little forgotten about.

Even though it is just as important, and many professors will have almost a 50-50 split between teaching and research.

So I would love to see a lot more focus on teaching from universities and improving teaching and using research-informed methods to teach physics.

I think physics especially is a little bit behind the times compared to some other fields.

So yeah, mainly I’d like to see more focus on teaching and sort of educating that next generation of scientists.

What to Watch: Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Brendan: Beautiful. Thank you, Laura.

Yeah, the tertiary education sector does need a shake-up.

Look, just before we go, what should our listeners keep an eye out for in the near future regarding your work or developments in gravitational wave astronomy?

What should we watch out for, Laura?

Laura: I think some of the sort of new… obviously, like, LISA is at least 10 years away.

But there’s the Vera Rubin Telescope, which has been running for about a year now. There’ll be some really cool data coming out from that within the next few years.

There’s also recently been the Roman Space Telescope launched successfully a couple of weeks ago, which is really exciting.

So even though these aren’t detecting gravitational waves, they’re still, you know, trying to answer these big questions about the universe.

I think those two especially, we’re going to see some really cool data from in the next couple of years.

Farewell and Astrophiz Sign-Off

Brendan: Beautiful. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Look, Laura, we’ve come to the end of our time here.

Thank you so much, Laura Burn.

Listeners can check out Laura’s Study with Laura videos on YouTube, and I can also recommend her lecture, A Human History of Looking Up: From Stargazing to Space Lasers.

That’s at tinyurl-DOT-com-FORWARDSLASH-lauraburn. That’s all one word, all lowercase.

And now, on behalf of all of our listeners, and especially from me, Laura, thanks for giving up your Sunday morning for us.

It’s been fantastic speaking with you. I’ve really enjoyed this, and I can’t wait to see Dr in front of your name and follow your future research adventures.

I’m looking forward to seeing some LISA papers with your name on it.

Thank you, Laura. Travel well.

Laura: Thanks, Brendan. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on the show.

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Brendan: And remember, Astrophiz is independent, ad-free and unsponsored.

So make sure you subscribe to Astrophiz, tell your Astro buddies, and join us on the first of each month for Dr Ian Musgrave’s SkyGuide, so you can plan your observing schedule.

And on the 15th of each month, join us for an in-depth interview with another one of the world’s leading space scientists.

Have fun. Look up. Clear skies.

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