At 8 pm last Friday (July 26), a friend and I attended a free lecture on the Cosmological History of Hydrogen given by Professor Rachel Webster. I thought that she was a good speaker, but I was a little bored because I knew most of the background that she covered during the lecture (mostly things about stars, the origin of the universe, emission/absorption spectra).
I was originally an astrophysics major and did my first research at Caltech with an astrophysics professor. My research revolved around determining the properties of young protostars that were the sources of Herbig Haro objects. I was working with absorption and emission spectra to determine the star type and then wrote code to extract different properties of the star (like rotational velocity...etc.).
The coolest thing about the lecture was at the very end when she began talking more about what she was doing. It would have been more interesting had she talked more specifically about her research to begin with because it sounded interesting! Recently she helped design and build a low frequency radio telescope, called the Widefield Array, in Mileura, Western Australia, that is currently being used to “detect the first sources in the universe” aka. neutral atomic hydrogen emission. The system in W Australia is really unique looking and is comprised of elements that she referred to as "bowties" on grids spread throughout the region. See the image below from Wikipedia for an example of one of the 4x4 grids.
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