Dr.+Justin+Crepp


 * Early Life/ Biography:**

Dr. Justin Crepp grew up in western Pennsylvania, where he was quarter back on his high school football team and he played center field in baseball. He also was a nationally ranked pool player when he was young. Crepp became interested in astronomy at a very young age.

Crepp had an inspirational physics teacher in high school. He says that the one moment that stands out in particular was when he told us the story of the "twin paradox", which has to do with Einstein's theory of relativity. Then, after a year or two in college, he decided to study astronomy.
 * How he got into it:**


 * Education:**

During high school, he had a great physics teacher that inspired him to decide to become a Physicist. At Penn State he got a bachelors degree in Physics with a minor in Math. He ended up graduating from the University of Florida in 2004.

He likes his career because he has found that reality can be more amazing than fiction and fantasy. As an example, Crepp mentions pulsars, dead stars that are about the size of a city. They are so dense, that a teaspoon would weigh as much as Mount Everest, but there is so much more. He then goes into this more in depth and how “our galaxy ... kind of makes Harry Potter's magic wand look mediocre.” In his job, he studies other stars and tries to find other planets orbiting them. Crepp says that recently, his teams have detected one new extrasolar planet, but the work is not yet published.
 * Career:**

Crepp has had several minor breakthroughs, but his results have not been published. For example, He discovered a very low-mass star that orbits two higher mass stars by using a new observational technique. In general, major contributions to his field are infrequent, but extremely exciting when they do occur. There are usually a few every decade. “Research takes lots of patience =)”
 * Breakthroughs:**

His hobbies are “ billiards, coaching baseball, chess, playing the guitar and piano; but now I spend most of my free-time playing with my 1 year old son.”
 * Hobbies:**