Benjamin Shaw is a postgraduate researcher in the Pulsars and Time-Domain Astrophysics Group at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. He runs Jodrell Bank’s flagship astronomy podcast, The Jodcast, and is a regular guest on BBC Radio 5’s Up All Night show. He obtained his Masters degree in Nuclear Astrophysics at the University of York. In his research at Jodrell Bank he uses the Lovell and other radio telescopes to time pulses from pulsars – the clock-like remnants of dead massive stars. These are city-sized objects that weigh as much as the Sun and some of them rotate faster than a kitchen blender blade! Some pulsars can be timed so accurately as they rotate, they rival the precision of the best atomic clocks on Earth and Ben tries to understand what physical processes make some pulsars better timekeepers than others.

Join Benjamin for his Q&A in the Space Shed at 11am.