• Question: Would you need engineering to become a astronemer or a brain surgeon?

    Asked by Alexthepurplemonkey to Stephen, Sita, Rory, Brian, Alison on 1 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Sita Karki

      Sita Karki answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      I think you would need engineering to become an astronomer.

    • Photo: Alison Dufresne

      Alison Dufresne answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      Technically you don’t need engineering to do either of those things but we all need each other! Engineers design and build telescopes for astronomers and equipment (like endoscopes or stents) for brain surgeons. In return brain surgeons save lives and astronomers show us amazing things about our Universe. Amazing things happen when we all work together.

    • Photo: Rory Scarrott

      Rory Scarrott answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      I have no idea :).
      Definately all the above require a solid grounding in maths, and the sciences (e.g. biology or physics).

    • Photo: Brian OConnor

      Brian OConnor answered on 1 Mar 2019:

      I don’t think engineering on its own would be enough, you would also need to understand space physics to be an astronomer and human anatomy to be a brain surgeon. But engineering is definitely useful for both of these careers!

    • Photo: Stephen O'Connor

      Stephen O'Connor answered on 4 Mar 2019: last edited 4 Mar 2019 1:17 pm

      No you don’t ‘strictly’ need engineering to become an astronomer or a brain surgeon, however it is important for both to have an understanding of engineering and an awareness of how it applies to their area of expertise. Engineers build telescopes for astronomers to observe the universe. Engineers build magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners for brain surgeons to image the brain. Astronomers and brain surgeons both give feedback and recommendations to engineers when they are designing these instruments so that they can add features and generally make them better next time.

      For an astronomer, physics, maths and computer science are the main subjects you would need to be an astronomer. Computer science has become an even more important skill recently because of the enormous growth in the amounts of data that satellites and ground based instruments are gathering. It is too time consuming for a person to ‘look’ through all the data, so astronomers use computer code to look for trends and interesting phenomena.

      For a brain surgeon, you would need a degree in medicine where you would cover topics such as anatomy, physiology and other medical related fields, but also they would study certain areas of maths, physics, chemistry and biology.

      Many areas of science are interdependent and work together to improve their usefulness.

Comments