Dawn of a new era for PhD grad – now featuring twice as many suns | Student stories - ANU Science

Rajika Kuruwita is an astronomer. Her PhD is on a subject which very much exists IRL but is actually best known from fiction, so that’s where she always starts, according to Tabitha Carvan, Senior Writer in the sciences for the Australian National University.
 

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“You’ve watched Star Wars, right?”

That’s how Rajika Kuruwita begins when explaining her PhD thesis. Despite what you may think, she does not study sci-fi films.

Rajika, known as Reggie, is an astronomer. Her PhD is on a subject which very much exists IRL, but is actually best known from fiction, so that’s where she always starts. Literally: her thesis opens with a quote from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

“You know in Star Wars, the planet Tatooine?” she goes on. “Can you tell me something strange about Tatooine?”

Tatooine has two suns, as does Douglas Adams’ planet Magrathea, and Doctor Who’s Gallifrey, and so many other sci-fi planets that there’s actually a Wikipedia page called “Binary stars in fiction”. But when astronomers think about planet formation, they’re not as imaginative as sci-fi writers...

Reggie received a job offer right after submitting her thesis and is now working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen. It’s the next step on a journey she started a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

“Astronomy is pretty much what I wanted to do from the very beginning. I always attribute it to my Grade 3 primary school teacher teaching us about the solar system. It blew my mind that there were planets in the solar system so different to Earth, like Venus with its acidic rain and gas giants like Jupiter.
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Source: ANU Science