Lorraine Hanlon

7 results

Dr Sheila McBreen: “We have physicists and engineers and mathematicians and it’s a student-led project, which is really exciting.”
Searching for the sources of violent explosions in space

Sheila, you are interested in big explosions in space. Tell us more “I work on gamma-ray bursts, which are big releases of energy. They usually happen(...)

The Irish space industry is growing exponentially, and expanding rapidly to take in a whole range of technologies. Photograph: iStock
Joining the space race

Space exploration used to be a two-horse race, the exclusive preserve of two major superpowers, each trying to outdo the other with ever-bigger rocket(...)

An artist’s rendering of the merger of two neutron stars. Image: Robin Dienel/The Carnegie Institution for Science via The New York Times
Space . . . a new frontier is announced

A collision of two neutron stars, 130 million light years away, has opened up “a new window on the Universe”. The spectacular event which occurred on (...)

Dust Defying Gravity (2004) from the exhibition 3 Different Nights Recurring by Grace Weir. Courtesy of the artist
Weir science: a stellar artistic voyage that poses big questions

‘When I hear the word ‘science’,” says Grace Weir, “it’s like hearing the word ‘art’. Are you thinking of opera, contemporary, abstract, theatre?” It(...)

The satellite is fitted with the largest camera ever launched into space
UCD spin-out company wins European Space Agency contract

Parameter Space, a new University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out company, has secured an €800,000 contract with the European Space Agency (ESA).The pur(...)

Once derided by Albert Einstein as “spooky action at a distance”, entanglement demonstrates how some particles are so deeply linked that observing one has an effect on the other, even though they may be separated widely. Photograph: AP Photo/File
Culture shock: The best artistic stories that science has to tell

Thousands of years ago people made up stories to explain the world. Myths describing the changing seasons often became dogma, morphing into religion. (...)

Kevin Courtney with Prof Lorraine Hanlon and Dr Sheila McBreen, of the Space Science Group, in UCD, looking at an XMM neutron space craft model. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times
View to a cosmic thrill

It’s the cosmic question that has puzzled minds since time began: what do astrophysicists do all day? Somehow you imagine the typical day of an astrop(...)