Scientist sessions: Meet Rok Nežič
Meet Rok Nežič, an astrophysicist and a science communicator working at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, Northern Ireland. Yes, his name is pronounced as “rock”. And he studies space rocks.
Travelling around the country
With his science outreach he aims to share knowledge about space topics and our solar system with larger audiences, ranging from kids to seniors. Why? So that people know what is out there. There is also nothing more important than encouraging curiosity, inquisitiveness and critical thinking. “I personally think that people who have more general knowledge, will be better off in their lives overall.”
He regularly visits schools around the country with a portable planetarium dome, showing kids and teens what secrets the space holds. Sitting in the dome is an immersive experience and because of its shape “it also accurately represents what you might be actually seeing in the night sky”. He also brings a piece of a meteorite with him – there is nothing more amazing for people than to be holding a piece from space in their hand.
The most common question he gets asked is why is Pluto not a planet (short answer: because we said so; long answer: new objects were discovered that made it necessary to redefine what a planet is). But there are also questions about the vacuum in space or even astrology – questions that he would never think to ask.
Presenting physics
Presenting complex physics to kids and lay audiences is not the simplest task but Rok has tricks up his sleeve. “I definitely don’t use any equations. The good thing about astronomy is that it is kind of the easy way into physics, it’s easy to make it interesting. And the photographs from the telescopes are just fantastic looking.” He uses different analogies to explain harder concepts, like orbits or black holes. “To explain orbits in full it would take a few university lectures, but basically my go-to is that orbiting is kind of falling sideways”. In other words, whatever object is orbiting in space, it is constantly falling, but in a sideway manner. “If you have something sitting up there with no speed [in space], it would just fall down [because of gravity]. But this [international space station] is moving at 8 km/s sideways. So if you don’t move at all, you would just fall down. If you move a bit faster, you will move a bit but then fall down. If you move extremely fast, you just fly away. But if it is just the right speed, as you move sideways, you will still fall a bit, but you will keep missing the planet” and staying on course in space.
Communicating science and spreading knowledge
Rok has been interested in communicating science ever since his undergraduate studies of Natural Sciences at Cambridge University. He participated in different societies, always trying to see and organize as many science talks as possible. As a PhD student he occasionally gave talks at the planetarium in Armagh. “That is really good practice for a student to try and explain science topics to a specific type of audience” because it makes you think about your scientific work in unconventional and new ways.
For him, the coolest part of his work is that he talks about space and he finds it extremely rewarding. Not only do you get immediate feedback how you communicate complex topics, but people also ask hard questions, which keeps him on edge to give better and better explanations.