The Imperceptible Plasma

“My father used to read to me before going to bed, when I was a young boy. He was an ordinary man-not a scientist, but he was very interested in space science. I clearly remember the first time he showed me a book with a picture of a space station (this was in the early 1960’s, long before the International Space Station). It was an artist’s impression, featuring astronauts in space suits moving outside the station with jet-packs.. This was so fascinating to me and I believe it sparked my interest in space science.” This is how Dr. Horne started talking about his life as a scientist, which has followed an interesting career path.
His first degree was in Physics and his PhD in space plasma physics. “I thought space science was very interesting, and plasmas in general have many practical applications. We see plasma in the sun, but also in a light bulb. People are even trying to use plasma to solve energy problems in the future”, says Dr. Horne. We are not very much aware of plasma in our ever day lives. We tend to think of solids, liquids and gases, but we rarely mention the 4th state of matter, which is plasma. There are different states of plasma in our nearby space environment.
“Plasma is not something you can hear or smell, but it is everywhere in the Universe. And this is very intriguing for me” says Dr. Horne. The idea of charged particles and waves interact with one another (the sort of things that happens in the Large Hadronic Collider at CERN) is very fundamental. “We are trying to understand the particles in space whose behaviour is very much controlled by different types of radio waves. Plasma has also very important practical implications, for instance in space it can damage  spacecraft. So trying to understand plasma physics helps us protect spacecraft as well”, concludes Dr. Horne.

Main Research Directions

“The biggest challenge in astronomy and space science comes down to finding out whether there is life elsewhere. Maybe we are not unique in the Universe”. But that is very difficult problem to solve.  On the other hand Dr. Horne’s future research plans are more down-to-Earth, so to speak. “I want to carry on studying the radiation belts. There are many problems that we need to understand better and solve, such as the dominant mechanism responsible for the acceleration of particles in the Earth’s radiation belts. We then need to take these ideas and apply them to other planets which also have radiation belts. Are the processes that we find on Earth also important for other planets? And if so, then are similar processes more universal?” explains Dr. Horne.
“Another thing I am involved in, is to try to identify where funding should go to in the UK. Should we allocate money to climate change, or to hazards, or to finding alternative types of energy? Which area of research should have higher priority over others? Helping the government to make informed decisions, is very important”, says Dr. Horne.
A major challenge in space research is of course forecasting space weather. “One thing that we do in the Spacecast project is to take the research models that we have developed and translate them into pre-operational models to forecast space weather and the risk of damage to satellites”, says Dr. Horne. Potentially this paves the way to try to forecast periods of high risk for satellites in orbit. Satellite operators and Insurance companies have certainly an interest in this. It also helps to improve spacecraft design. “This is something we are doing in our current SPACECAST project and will continue in a new project called SPACESTORM which starts next year (2014). I’ve got a mixture of research scientists, experimental scientists, and companies involved in the project. We are going to look into the extremes of space weather and the radiation environment. Then we will have engineers examining what the damage on the satellites could be and consequently conduct experiments to try to improve the design”, explains Dr. Horne.

Modern Challenges

“In my opinion the secret of success is to choose a subject that you are really interested in and enthusiastic about”, says Dr. Horne. “But it must be something that you really want to do in life”, he adds. If you want to do research a PhD is the next important career step. But beware, research is quite different from being an undergraduate student and accomplishing a degree. “It is all about thinking and understanding, there are no clear answers, and there are many interesting challenges associated with that aspect. You need to start thinking for yourself and this is what makes it creative and exciting”.
Unfortunately this is not the whole story. Funding is a practical challenge which becomes more and more difficult. Getting a job as a scientist is not trivial. People may have a contract for three years and then find it very hard to find more funding and have to leave  the system; competition makes career in space sciences very unstable. So the biggest challenge may actually be to find a stable job, such as a lecturer at the University. “It depends on the nature of the people”, says Dr. Horne. “Some people like the idea of moving around the world every three years. This is good for their career experience. The difficulty starts when you get married and have a family. Then it is much more difficult to combine career with family life”, he adds. Particularly for a woman, this is very difficult. Then the challenge becomes to try finding support so as to keep doing science and carry on with one’s career.
“Over the past ten years my field of science has expanded tremendously. There is a lot more competition now, a lot of people working on similar kinds of problems, and they are all trying to make progress in the field. You need to be much more aware of what is happening around you, how research on a particular problem is progressing, in order to develop your own ideas”, explains Dr. Horne. So, there is a kind of a race out there “You also need to develop social skills, to interact and talk to people. That’s really important. So this is my advice to young people: Go to more parties!” concludes Dr. Horne.

Important Things in Life

Being positive and setting aside personal time are the two things that Dr. Horne considers most important. “It’s very difficult to keep a balance between personal life and research and set aside time for your family and children. I hope that I managed to do that but it is a very difficult challenge that you’ve got to face”, he says.
Also, a few people in life can  be very negative and there are some scientists that can also behave this way.. For instance when somebody gives a talk there is a tradition in some places for people to be hostile to the speaker when asking questions, as if this ‘raises them up’.  However, you can ask the most difficult questions in a nice and constructive way. In this way you can welcom more people to join the particular field of research and can make progress faster.
 “Some people think that if they have a cake and other people come and join them, then they will have  a smaller and smaller piece of cake. But there is also another idea, one that I subscribe to, that when more people come and  join the cake becomes bigger and bigger, and thus everybody gets a bigger share.”, says Dr. Horne.
“So I would say: be nice and positive and you will make real progress in life!” he concludes.

Eleni Chatzichristou

MAARBLE Outreach Team