On the 21st of November, Johanna Vos, a PhD student, came in to speak to us about science in college and, more specifically, astrophysics. She gave us a wide range of career options both inside of science and outside. For example, with a science degree you can work in research or lab or go in the complete opposite direction and work in a business company such as Google or Spotify. She worked around the world, most often in the Atacama Desert in Chile and we discovered that a science degree is a great way to travel the world because every country has its own resources. She then went on to give us a brief overview of what an exoplanet is. An exoplanet is a planet that is either (a) orbiting another star in another galaxy or (b) floating along in space like a star. There are approximately 1 x  10 ^24  exoplanets in space. Her PhD is based on studying the weather of exoplanets, something that has never been done before. She discovered that an exoplanet (called PSO-318) has clouds. However they are not clouds made up of water vapour, instead they are made up of molten metal. This was an amazing achievement for her and we hope she continues her ground-breaking research.

https://www.loretothegreen.ie/images/activities/PHD_Student.jpg