Space Fest

04.06.2024

This year, our group participated to Space Fest, an event dedicated to space activities, which gathers at the same place astronauts, scientists and representatives of the aeronautical industry. As this year was it’s second edition, we stepped up our game as well. More about the event can be found here,

We showed up with a gravitational wave simulator witch we used not only for showcasing how gravitational waves are formed, but also for describing the type of signals LISA will detect and how it will emit alerts to other observatories once a gravitational wave is found. We invited visitors of all ages to help us with our citizen science project: we challenged each of them to make their own waveform by throwing a lighter ball on a stretchy fabric which already had a heavy ball on it. The lighter ball would start insprialing around the heavier one until the two objects “merged”. The deformations of the fabric were recorded with a video camera and each movie clip was afterwards analysed and transposed in a waveform. We also connected the fabric to a computer so that an audible signal would be made when a wave would move close to the LISA mockup.

For those of you who created waveforms on our simulator, the waiting time is finally over! We processed all the signals you created and now it is finally time for you to discover what your distortion in space and time looks like!

When analysing the recorders, we used a python code which is publicly available here. The formalism we used for computing the waveform is presented in the poster below (click on the image to enlarge it):

The gravitational wave you can see here is the ideal model, but the universe always amazes us with all kind of more exotic waveforms. So do not worry if your waveform doesn’t look exactly like the one in the poster; it only means that you were a more eccentric source yourself ;) .

All you have to do now is to PUSH THE BUTTON! ;-)

Find your waveform!

Astrofest 2024

17.05.2024

Between 17th and 18th of May, our group was present at Astrofest, an outreach event which aims to bring people of all ages closer to science. It took place in Parcul Crangasi from Bucharest, where we prepared space-themed hands-on activities. We’ve welcome visitors with a guided virtual tour of the Solar System and a SpaceQuizz for those who wanted to test their knowledge and learn new information. Moreover, we presented an optical module prototype that was placed on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea as a part of a neutrino detecting experiment.

Games of Science...again!

12.05.2024

Another year, another edition of Games of Science! In case you’re wondering, Games of Science is a project that aims to bring science closer to people of all ages by training young researchers to communicate about their research in a way that anyone would understand. The project has two parts: an intensive training day, followed by a competition day which has the purpose of giving participants a context in which they would practice what they have just learnt.

This time, other two members of our group, Maria Isfan and Razvan Balasov, participated at local editions and both qualified at the national final! Maria gave the audience a little inside story about the complicated, yet beautiful relationship between quantum computers and artificial intelligence, which led to the fascinating quantum artificial intelligence. While Razvan fascinated the crowd by describing why black holes are not actually the “bad guys” of the Universe, but actually the most massive ecologists ever known ;)

The fierce competition ended with both our colleagues winning special prices from the jury.

November Among Students

01.12.2023

Every autumn, the University of Bucharest’s Faculty of Physics organises an outreach event particularly dedicated for high scholars and students. The event invites everyone to dare to travel through the Universe via interesting experiments and by trying to solve Physics dilemmas at the “Be a Feynman” contest. There is also a job fair where representatives of important research institutes present the their and internship opportunities for the students.
Our group represented the Institute of Space Science at the event. Besides the natural curiosity about everything that lays above us, kids of all ages were also attracted to stop by our stand because of the guided tour of our Solar System that they were able to experience through the VR technology and the Space Quiz that helped them test their space knowledge and learn even more.

(Late)Summer School

15.09.2023

Every year the Institute of Space Science is one of the partners of MSciTeh Summer School from Magurele, making August a particularly busy month for our group as we are involved in mentoring activities of high school students. Scholars from all over the country become scientists for two weeks during which they have to conduct an actual scientific analysis under the guidance of researchers.

‍ The research theme we proposed for this year was focused around solving a cocktail party problem with neural networks. By the end of the school. The students learnt how to develop their own neural network from scratch, how to search for solutions like a real researcher and how to present their results in a scientific manner!

During the summer school, our group members were invited to discuss more on the subject in two different interviews which you can also check out here.

ASPACE-Q

The Astrophysics, Space Exploration and Quantum Computing Group