Staff Writer Anoushka Sinha takes us behind the scenes, reflecting on her experience working with the Royal Observatory, Greenwich at New Scientist Live 2024.
On 13 October 2024, I had the honour of not only attending the New Scientist Live event, but working behind the scenes at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich booth.
The event itself featured everything from life-size dinosaur puppets, to presentations about the calories required for Pikachu to administer his thunderbolts.
The day started off as usual – coffee and a tedious train journey.
Once I finally found my booth in the Excel Centre (astounded at the sight of the place not being filled with KCL exam chairs), I changed into the matching moon t-shirts the Royal Observatory team was sporting and we got ready for the various visitors.
Grown-ups and children alike were intrigued by the ‘sounds of space’ station we had set up, which featured the sounds created by magnetic fluctuations near Jupiter, debris collisions by a comet, and a spacecraft landing on Mars.
Along with these, the Royal Observatory team had created 3D models of the surfaces of different planets. People came to see the size of Olympus Mons (the largest mountain in the Solar System) but stayed to see how similarities between the surface of Mars and the riverbeds found on Earth, showed that Mars must, in fact, have once been covered in water.
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The most intriguing attraction of all though, was definitely the one we used to lure passers-by into our booth:
“Would you like to smell space?” I asked every unsuspecting candidate.
The mug we had was beautiful, featuring constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. It would never be suitable for holding tea or coffee again though, as the ‘smell of space’ within was bound to linger forevermore.
The smell which clings to astronauts’ space suits once they re-enter their spacecraft is said to be reminiscent of “seared steak, hot metal, and welding fumes”. This is due to the carbon and metal found in space, and their reactions with oxygen.
One strange thing I noticed was that, while many did not like the smell, I was reminded of my grandmother’s house, as were many of the South Asian people who visited our booth. One father-daughter duo solved the mystery by observing that the smell was probably created in our constellation mug using camphor – commonly used in Hindu prayers.
Aside from running my own booth with the Royal Observatory, I did get the chance to visit other stalls; I took selfies with dinosaurs at the ‘RentADinosaur’ stand and was inspired enough to buy a copy of ‘Dinopedia’ by Darren Naish at the ‘Blackwell’s’ pop-up book stall.
As a physics student, the nuclear fusion stands definitely intrigued me the most however, as I jumped from ‘First Light Fusion’ to the ‘UK Atomic Energy Authority’ to the ‘National Nuclear Laboratory’.
To sum it up, the New Scientist Live event was not just the perfect way to expand my horizons as an Astronomy Presenter at the Royal Observatory, but also food for the student in me.
And, if anyone is wondering whether tickets to the Royal Observatory are really worth it, one student of the astronomy courses taught there told me that “the Royal Observatory is the greatest place” to be.
For more of Roar’s coverage of New Scientist Live 2024, click here.
