Earlier this year, Durham University was named Europe's leading centre for astronomy and cosmology research. Stuart Arnold speaks to three of its space researchers to find out why they are making waves

ONCE space was regarded as the final frontier. However rapid advancements in technology and the stellar work by, among others, researchers at Durham University, mean we know a lot more about it than ever before.

The university ranked above NASA earlier this year, being placed sixth in the Thomson-Reuters list of the world’s most influential scientific minds, which reflects its broad range of research including the evolution of galaxies and black holes and the search for dark matter.

Experts at Durham provided the theory behind a number of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, which discovered the existence of the Higgs boson particle. This discovery is helping to answer questions about how the universe works. Meanwhile, the university’s Centre for Advanced Instrumentation, based at NetPark, in Sedgefield, is building parts for some of the world’s biggest telescopes.

Asked why Durham has built up this world wide reputation, Professor Martin Ward, its Temple Chevallier Chair of Astronomy, says it’s simple.

“We have very good people and the university has been willing to invest money,” he says. There’s a lot going on and people want to come and work here. “

Prof Ward has recently been in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a meeting between the European Space Agency – for which he is a consultant – and the Chinese Space Agency. The aim is to select a joint mission to fly into space in 2021. He’s also involved with work on the James Webb space telescope, which will eventually replace NASA’s much heralded Hubble telescope.

As if that wasn’t enough, he’s also in charge of a mission to study the X-rays emitted by black holes. “Black holes are pretty important and influence what happens to the galaxy through gravity,” explains Prof Ward. “Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a black hole which is four million times as heavy as the sun, but there are black holes at the centre of galaxies a billion times the mass of the sun.”

Prof Ward spends a lot time giving talks on whether life might exist elsewhere, still one of the biggest questions posed by those with an interest in space. He’s pretty certain the answer is yes.

“It’s very unlikely Earth is the only planet life started on,” he says. “There are probably billions of places in the universe and some fraction of them could have life.”

CARLTON Baugh is a professor in the department of physics at the university and a theoretical cosmologist. He is currently working on a European Space Agency probe called Euclid which will launch in 2020 and map the images of two billion galaxies.

Prof Baugh’s interests include the large scale structure of the universe, which includes mysterious ‘dark matter’. He says dark matter may be holding the galaxy together, although we can’t actually figure out what it is yet. “We know there is extra stuff in the universe which we can’t see easily, missing mass if you like,” he says. “That’s because if you apply the laws of gravity to space there is something that doesn’t add up, things move too quickly for what we can see.”

Can he say why the ordinary man or woman in the street should care about space and why we remain so fascinated by it? “With dark matter, who knows, if we can discover what it is we might solve problems in the future that we can’t even anticipate now,” he says. “It’s like Columbus discovering America, people always want to find new things.”

FOR 23-year-old PHD astrophysics student Hannah Earnshaw, her research at Durham University may be the launchpad to send her into space – to the ‘red planet’ Mars no less. From 200,000 candidates, she is among the last 700 or so still in the running to be selected for the Dutch-based Mars One project which hopes to set up a permanent colony on Mars.

“It’s a planet that captures people’s imagination,” she says. “It’s also not too different in terms of gravity to Earth and has materials we could use to create breathable oxygen and water.”

She’s very matter of fact about what could be a life changing experience for her. By the end of 2015 Mars One will have selected six crews of four people each to go into full training. Three years later there would be a satellite and landing mission to Mars with the first human launches following in 2024. How would she feel then about leaving friends and family behind, should she be successful? “There’ll still be ways to communicate, via the internet hopefully, but I know it’s a decision which will affect the rest of my life. It’d be an exciting challenge to overcome.”