International Year of Astronomy Lecture Series
Click on a link to see pdf version of talk slides (when available).
January 21, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM Jack Littleton, professor emeritus of physics at WVU
Gamma-ray bursts - the biggest bangs since the Big Bang
A “by-product” astronomical discovery of the cold-war’s Vela satellites, gamma-ray burst have begun yielding their secrets only in the last two decades. The talk begins with the discovery of gamma-rays at the beginning of the 20th century, describes their properties, discusses the discovery of gamma-ray bursts, and describes the efforts to detect, locate, and analyse them as part of our attempt to understand their cosmic origins.
Jack Littleton retired from the faculty of the West Virginia University Department of Physics last year after teaching astronomy and physics for 33 years. He is a theoretical astrophysicst who received his BS in engineering physics at Cornell and his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Rochester. In his research he has worked on supernovae, white dwarfs, the solar wind, red giants, and galaxy structure. He has observed with the 140-ft radio telescope at Green Bank and the CoudÃ?ÃÃ?© feed spectrograph at Kitt Peak. He has given presentations at star parties and astronomy days around West Virginia for the last decade. He continues working in the physics department and participates in the activities of the astrophysics group.
Feb. 18, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Maura McLaughlin, assistant professor of physics, WVUPulsars: Timekeepers of the Cosmos
Pulsars are neutron stars that are formed in supernova explosions following the collapse of massive evolved stars. These exotic objects are more massive than the Sun, and can spin over 700 times a second. They have extremely high magnetic fields – over a trillion times the Earth’s! These properties make them energetic sources of radio waves, which are beamed along their magnetic axes. We detect a “pulse” of radio emission once every pulsar rotation period, in a similar manner to a lighthouse. The rotation periods of pulsars can be measured incredibly precisely, making these “cosmic clocks” excellent laboratories for testing general relativity, learning about binary orbits and measuring stellar velocities. Pulsars can also be used to learn about the interstellar medium, and to constrain the equation of state of superdense matter. In this lecture, I will give an overview of pulsars and their properties, and describe several recent highlights of pulsar research. I will explain how the study of pulsars has changed our view of the Universe and the physical laws governing it. Finally, I will discuss the future of research in this dynamic field, and what we still hope to learn from these remarkable compact stars.
Maura McLaughlin received her B.S. from Penn State University in 1994 and her PhD. from Cornell University in 2001. She then spent five years working at the University of Manchester in England, first on an NSF Distinguished Research Fellowship and then on a University Research Fellowship. She started her current position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at West Virginia University in May of 2006, and she has an adjunct appointment at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV. She has recently been awarded a Sloan Fellowship for her research. Her research mainly involves studies of neutron stars, compact remnants of massive stars. Dr. McLaughlin studies these stars with X-ray and gamma-ray satellites and with some of the largest radio telescopes in the world.
March 25, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Kim Weaver, NASA astrophysicist and WVU alumnaSupermassive Black Holes in Galaxies
Black holes are among the most fascinating and least understood objects in the universe. Since their discovery in the 1970s, they have captured the imagination of astronomers and the public alike. Almost every galaxy has a gigantic black hole at its center, including our own Milky Way. This interplay of phenomena is the focus of some of the most intriguing science being done today. I will present the latest NASA data which shed light on how black holes and galaxies affect each others’ fates. This talk will feature a look at the epic struggle between these two titanic forces and examine the question, which one is winning the game?
Dr. Kim Weaver is currently an astronomer and adjunct professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She grew up in Morgantown, WV and received her undergraduate degree in physics from West Virginia University. Kim began studying astronomy at the University of Maryland at College Park, MD and finally discovered the exciting world of x-ray astronomy as a graduate student while working summers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Kim received her doctorate degree from the University of Maryland in 1993 and in 1996, she won a NASA Presidential Early Career Award to pursue scientific research in X-ray astronomy.
April 16, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Sera Cremonini, assistant professor of physics, University of MichiganSuperstrings: The ultimate theory of everything?
What are the basic building blocks of nature? What holds the key to unifying the four fundamental forces of nature? In this talk we will explore some of the most exciting recent developments in string theory, the leading candidate for a theory of quantum gravity. We will examine the connection between large scales and small scales, between Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics, and learn what string theory has taught us about black holes and the early moments of the Universe.
Professor Cremonini’s research is in the general area of theoretical high energy physics, focusing in particular on string theory. Much of her work has been on the connection between theories which contain gravity and quantum field theories, concentrating on the role played by dualities in relating the two descriptions. She has also worked at the interface of particle physics and cosmology, with special emphasis on describing dynamical processes within the framework of string theory. Thus far, much of the work in string theory has been in the context of static settings. However, if we want to properly describe the universe we live in, it is essential to understand how strings behave once time dependence has been taken into account. Furthermore, in her work she has explored more phenomenological applications, such as possible signatures of quantum gravity on the observable universe. Finally, she is interested in better understanding the types of predictions string theory can make on physics at lower energies, with the goal of building a string theoretic description of the Standard Model of particle physics.
May 20, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Paulo Freire, research assistant professor of physics, WVUThe Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn
Since 2004, the Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn and taking stunning pictures of its atmosphere, rings and moons. In this talk, we review the astounding progress in our understanding of the Saturn system, focusing particularly on the first pictures of the mysterious surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Peering beneath the clouds that have hitherto shrouded this moon, the Cassini and Huyghens probes found a landscape in many ways reminiscent of Earth, dotted by vast dune systems, methane lakes, methane rivers and volcanos, where the “lava” is liquid water. We also focus on the discovery of the geysers of Enceladus, and what these tell us about the prospects for life in the Universe.
Professor Freire’s research is in the study of pulsars as astrophysical tools: they can be used to probe the strange properties of matter at the very highest densities naturally found in our Universe. They can also be used to test Einstein’s general relativity, and will eventually be used to detect gravitational waves at very low frequencies. Paulo obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Manchester in 2001, since then he has been a Cornell University astronomer at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the site of the world’s largest radio telescope. He is presently spending half his time at West Virginia University. Apart from his work on pulsars, Paulo has a keen interest in Solar System astronomy, with a particular focus on the outer planets.
June 10, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Mark Kochte, NASAPrometheus-Bound: NASA’s Return Mission to Mercury
It has been 3-Ã?ÃÃ?½ decades since the Mariner 10 spacecraft performed three flybys of the innermost planet to our Sun: Mercury. During these flybys, Mariner 10 photographed 45% of its surface, making enormous discoveries about this hard-to-visit (or even observe) planet. In 2008, the MESSENGER spacecraft followed up with two of three planned flybys of Mercury, and more than doubled the information Mariner 10 gathered. Join MESSENGER team member Mark ‘Indy’ Kochte as he takes you on a journey to one of the most elusive bodies in our Solar System, where not even the vaunted Hubble Space Telescope can peer.
Born and raised in northeast Ohio, Mark ‘Indy’ Kochte got his degree in astronomy from the Ohio State University in 1987. Shortly after he joined the Hubble Space Telescope project at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, doing the acquisition, processing, and archiving of Hubble data. During his tenure on the mission he was afforded the opportunity to do some research in the studies of extrasolar planets, and helped define the evidence of an atmosphere around a planet in the star system HD 209458b. He also was heavily involved in the grassroots project UMBRAS, a spacecraft design that would enable space telescopes to actually visually detect extrasolar planets the size of Jupiter or Saturn. After 17 years with Hubble, in late summer of 2005, he moved on to join the FUSE (Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer) project as a Mission Planner, learning the immense challenges on how to deal with a satellite that had only one reaction wheel remaining. In November of 2006 he was afforded the opportunity to join the MESSENGER Mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab as one of two Payload Operations Specialists. He is now fully embroiled in this project, feverishly preparing for the next Mercury flybys, and thereafter orbital insertion in 2011.
July 22, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Jay Lockman, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green BankThe Green Bank Telescope: West Virginia’s Mountain Ear
West Virginia is home to one of the world’s great scientific instruments: the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Radio Telescope (the GBT). The design and construction of the GBT took more than ten years as it incorporated many unique and ground-breaking features never before used in a telescope. It is now making fundamental discoveries in many areas of astronomy, astrochemistry, and astrophysics, and promises to keep the Green Bank Observatory at the forefront of modern research for many years. In this talk I will tell the story of how the National Radio Astronomy Observatory came to be located in Pocahontas County at Green Bank, the development of its first telescopes, and the events that led up to the catastrophic collapse of the 300-Foot telescope in 1988. After a slide show on the construction of the GBT, I’ll end with a general overview of some recent discoveries that have been made with the Telescope including new molecules in space, exotic pulsars, gas clouds crashing into the Milky Way, and galaxies being formed in the early days of theUniverse.
Dr. Felix J. “Jay” Lockman is the Principal Scientist for the Green Bank Telescope at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV, past site Director of the Green Bank Observatory, and an internationally recognized expert on the Milky Way. He is the author of more than 85 research papers in astronomy and has lectured at Universities all over the world. His undergraduate degree is from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA, and his Ph.D. was obtained from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA. In addition to his research, he is involved in educational activities and travels widely giving non-technical talks on astronomy to diverse audiences.
Aug. 26, 2009 Room 126 Ming Hsieh Hall, 7:30 PM – Duncan Lorimer, assistant professor of physics, WVUMatters of Gravity: Einstein’s Theories of Relativity
A little over a century ago, Einstein published five remarkable papers which changed our perspective on many areas of modern physics. One of these, the special theory of relativity, demonstrated that time and space are intimately linked in a four-dimensional “spacetime” and presented a radical revision of the laws of motion for rapidly moving objects. Almost a decade later, in 1917, Einstein was successfully able to generalize this theory to explain gravity as the curvature of spacetime due to the presence of massive objects. In this talk, we will explore some of the remarkable consequences of the theory and examine how astronomers are currently testing Einstein’s theories to limits that were well beyond the reach of technology a century ago.
Duncan Lorimer is originally from Darlington, the home of the railways, in the northeast of England. After undergraduate study at the University of Wales in Cardiff, he completed a PhD in radio astronomy at the University of Manchester in 1994. Lorimer’s research revolves around pulsars – highly rotating magnetized neutron stars that act as cosmic clocks. He has worked at the Max-Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany, the National Aeronomy and Ionospheric Center at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, and at the University of Manchester as a Royal Society Research Fellow. He has been a member of the Physics Department at WVU since 2006.
Sept. 23, 2009 Room 202 Brooks Hall, 7:30 PM* – Ronald Mallett, professor of physics, University of Connecticut Time Travel
Based on his book, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality, Professor Mallett discusses the possibility of time travel via Einstein’s theories of relativity and highlights his own research. This non-technical lecture also considers the problems and paradoxes of time travel.
Professor Ronald L. Mallett received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Pennsylvania State University. He worked for United Technologies from 1973-5, and in 1975 joined the physics faculty at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, where he has been a professor of theoretical physics ever since. Prof. Mallett has published numerous papers on black holes and cosmology in professional journals. His breakthrough research on time travel has been featured extensively in the media around the world, including print media such as New Scientist, the Village Voice, the Boston Globe, the Hartford Courant, Rolling Stone magazine, Pravda (Moscow), The Wall Street Journal, and broadcast media such as NPR’s This American Life, the History Channel, Science Channel, Learning Channel and the National Geographic Channel. Professor Mallett’s recently published memoir “Time Traveler” is a compelling and human story of a man whose deep childhood trauma drove him on a quest to build a time machine. The book has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and is to be made into a feature film by Spike Lee.
Oct. 21, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Dave Meisel, professor emeritus of physics, State University of New York, Geneseo, and WVU alumnusNear Earth Objects: From Dust and Rocks to Comets and Asteroids
Most people have seen “shooting stars” or meteors in the night sky. Sometimes spectacular showers of meteors such as the Leonids of the 1990s and the early 2000s attract wide public attention. Radar studies of meteors go back to the late days of WWII and they remain a powerful technique for studying meteors too faint to be seen with cameras and other optical techniques. Most of these “micrometeors” have origins as decay products from comets and an occasional few appear to come from beyond the solar system. Examples of work done with the UHF radar at Arecibo Observatory and the European EISCAT radar will be described. At the other end of the mass scale is the occasional spectacular “fireball” or if it explodes, a bolide. These are mostly products of asteroid collisions and are related to that class of objects that are thrown out of the asteroid belt by the gravitational disturbances by the planets Jupiter and Saturn. They are called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), The majority of NEOs are asteroids and are much larger than most fireball producing meteorids. NEOs are very important because they have the potential to collide with the earth and cause widespread damage. While the Arecibo radars cannot easily detect atmospheric fireballs, the highest frequency Arecibo radars are able to detect NEOs before they actually hit the earth and are capable of producing maps of these objects and enable to orbits to be determined many times more accurately than by optical means. Such observations help astronomers to determine collision probabilities for all objects known to be capable of hitting the earth.
David Meisel was born in Fairmont, W.Va on March 28, 1940. He graduated from Fairmont Senior High in 1957. He got a BS in Physics from WVU in 1961 and an MS and PhD from Ohio State University in 1963, 1967. He taught at University of Virginia 1965-70 and then spent 35 years at SUNY-Geneseo teaching physics and astronomy while doing research in spectroscopic studies of binary stars, comets, meteors, and several projects in radio astronomy including early studies of pulsars with the late Sam Goldstein at UVa. In 2001 he was selected as a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Author or co-author of over 150 publications, he retired from teaching in 2005 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Computational Astrophysics but is still an active researcher in radar studies of dust-sized meteors using the Arecibo Observatory “big dish” in Puerto Rico. He has collaborators in Sweden and Japan as well as in the US. In 2004, he was honored as a Distinguished Alumni by the WVU Physics Department.
Nov. 18, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – Jason Best, professor of astronomy and astrophysics and director of the Institute for Environmental Studies, Shepherd UniversityCosmology of the Renaissance and the renaissance of Cosmology
The past four hundred years have seen major upheavals in cosmological world views. This presentation will outline competing cosmological models of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, including those that have formed the foundation of modern astronomy but have received little acknowledgement in their own right. A discussion of the transition from this era to the modern era will incorporate the contributions of both ground-based and space-based missions to the current understanding of structure in the Universe.
Dr. Jason Best is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics and the founding observatory director at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. He earned his B.S in astronomy and astrophysics from Indiana University and his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from Penn State University. His research focuses on the study of galactic evolution and the large-scale structure of the universe. He has published work in numerous venues, and has participated in Indiana University’s Faculty Fellowship Program and Project CLEA’s Summer Workshop on Astronomical Research Techniques in the Introductory Laboratory.
Dec. 9, 2009 Room 260 Hodges Hall, 7:30 PM – D.J. Pisano, assistant professor of physics, WVU Galaxies: Building Blocks of the Universe
Galaxies are the largest individual objects in the Universe. They formed early in the history of the Universe by coalescing stars, gas, and dark matter. They have evolved into a variety of shapes of sizes, including spiral shaped, elliptical, and irregular. Galaxies trace the structure of the Universe from dense clusters to sparse voids. I will discuss how galaxies form and evolve and how astronomers use galaxies to study the Universe.
D.J. Pisano received his B.S. from Yale University in 1996 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin – Madison in 2001. After receiving his Ph.D, he took up a NSF Distinguished International Research Fellowship and Bolton fellow at the Australia Telescope National Facility in Sydney, Australia until 2004. He then returned to the U.S. as a National Research Council Research Associate at the Naval Research Laboratory until 2006, when he moved to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, WV as a Green Bank Telescope postdoctoral fellow. He has been an assistant professor of physics at WVU and adjunct assistant astronomer at NRAO since January 2009. He uses radio telescopes in the U.S., Australia, India, and Europe to study how galaxies, including our own, form and evolve.
