Anais Möller

If you look at the sky on any given night, you might expect it to look about the same. But in reality, the Universe is a dynamic place! Anais Möller—an astrophysicist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia—has studied the changing things in the Universe for more than a decade!

Specifically, Anais has used supernovae to learn about the Universe—but how? Imagine you have two identical lightbulbs, one next to you and the other a mile (1.6 km) away. Which looks brighter? If you guessed the closer lightbulb, you’d be right! Even though the two lightbulbs intrinsically give off the same amount of light, the farther one appears fainter to you because less of that intrinsic light reaches your eyes. By measuring how much fainter the further lightbulb is, you could calculate how far away it is. Astronomers like Anais have a tool like these lightbulbs to help them gauge distances across the Universe, called “Type 1a supernovae.”

In a Type 1a supernova, a leftover core of a Sun-like star (called a “white dwarf”) pulls material from a nearby star until it explodes. White dwarfs usually explode in the same way, and around the same specific total mass. That means that all Type 1a supernovae shine in the same way, like the lightbulbs. Astronomers like Anais can measure the brightnesses of the Type 1a supernovae they discover, and use that information to calculate distances across the Universe. And since looking at distant objects is like looking back in time, Anais uses these supernovae to understand how the Universe has changed and evolved over billions of years.

Lately, Anais has also studied other things that change in the Universe, like signals from colliding neutron stars called “kilonovae” or powerful, extremely short signals of radio waves called “fast radio bursts.” All of these interests in the changing Universe led Anais naturally to work with Rubin Observatory, which will be particularly good at finding changing objects! “One of the challenges of Rubin is we're going to have around 10 million detections of objects changing in the sky every night,” Anais says. To deal with the resulting huge amount of data, Anais co-leads one of several groups of astronomers and software engineers who are developing tools to handle the billions of changes Rubin will detect during its ten-year survey.

“I have always been very curious,” Anais says, as she describes growing up in Venezuela. She initially went to school for engineering but soon decided it wasn’t for her. “I switched to theoretical physics, which in Venezuela is a very weird thing to study,” she says. After several internships, including one working with data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, she continued on to get her Master’s degree in France. Her last internship had involved Type Ia supernovae, and that inspired her PhD research. She spent some time as a postdoctoral researcher in Australia, then went back to France, and finally settled in Australia again. Along the way she expanded her science interests beyond supernovae. “I think that's part of science and research,” she says. “We have so many skills that are completely transferable. I'm very curious, I'm learning things I have never studied.”

In her free time, Anais enjoys arts like dance, music, and poetry—she’s even found a group of fellow Hispanic poets in Melbourne that she regularly meets up with. Growing up near the mountains in Venezuela also gave Anais a love for the outdoors, and she likes to go rock climbing and hiking. Her favorite hiking spot is Venezuela’s Tepuyes, the table-top mountains that inspired the landscape of Disney’s “Up.” And it’s still her favorite, even after a trip where the trail collapsed down the mountain with her still on it! In Melbourne, Anais has also been able to indulge her love of the sea by joining a sailing team.

In her journey, Anais has tried many things. Science is full of trial and error, and trial again. Part of becoming a scientist is learning to adapt and continue expanding horizons—both in terms of your personal journey and humanity’s understanding of the Universe. “Failure is not failure,” Anais says. “It’s just temporary.” That’s a good reminder for life in general, not just science!

Lightning round Q&A: Get to know Anais better!

What animal would you swap places with for a day?
A penguin

What is a food or a meal that you could eat for a week straight?
Milk. Specifically raw milk, which is illegal in many countries actually

What is a hobby that feels out of reach that you’d like to have?
Scuba diving

What is your most used emoji?
The crying laughing face on its side 🤣 And the woman facepalming 🤦‍♀️