Roberto Trotta is a theoretical cosmologist in the Astrophysics Group in the Physics Department at Imperial College London. His research interests focus on the analysis and interpretation of cosmological data sets, in particular in relation with dark matter and dark energy. He is also interested in the early Universe and in developing connections between cosmology and particle physics.
Roberto presented about the Universe to pupils in years 5 and 6 from Norland Place school in Holland Park. Roberto explained about the moon, sun and earth and how long it takes them to orbit each other. Three girls were chosen to represent the moon, sun and earth which prompted the students to ask questions. During his talk, Roberto explained that until very recently the only other planets we knew about apart from Earth were planets in our Solar System.
In the second half of the session, Roberto used fruit and vegetables to show the varying sizes of the planets. He asked the audience to choose which fruit and vegetables they felt best represented the size of the different planets. This activity prompted a lot of questions about the different sizes of the planets and following the event one student said: “I now want to visit the planets”.