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By Jennifer Cador
Poole
As a kid in Ontario, he used to lie on his back on starry summer nights and gaze up at the sky, pondering the endless celestial wonders above. As an adult, Dr. Gregory Poole is still intrigued with the cosmos, and his groundbreaking research on galaxy clusters has earned him the highest honour the Faculty of Graduate Studies bestows, the Governor General’s Gold Medal.
Poole is interested in the big picture: galaxy clusters are the largest structures in the universe, and their collisions with each other to form new, merged structures will reveal, in the coming decades, much about how the universe works.
Poole explains that one of the most intriguing problems astronomers are focusing on is dark matter, evidenced where structures like galaxies behave as if they have more mass than is visible. The research strongly suggests that galaxies are sitting in balls of dark matter, and Poole says his work with the hot gases swirling within those structures reveals a lot about the nature of the dark matter itself.
Understanding the workings of the universe could lead to new knowledge of processes on earth. Poole points out that nature has a very compact set of rules.
“You can study breast cancer tumours or you can study the collision of galaxy clusters. You’re using the same language, the same knowledge, the same set of principles to do both, and those principles could fit in a book.”
The Governor General’s Gold Medal caps off a stellar academic career for Poole in which he achieved a perfect 9.00 GPA, picking up major awards and fellowships along the way.
But new horizons beckon. Poole is headed for Melbourne, Australia, this summer to study in detail the life and movement of 400,000 galaxies. And who knows what might come out of it?
“Discoveries are made in the most unexpected places. Astronomy is a voyage into the unknown. The hope is that in illuminating the unknown, we’ll empower ourselves to do and build and perceive things we otherwise couldn’t.”
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