Goodness me! I meant to write my IYA blog over the weekend, but my car got broken into and robbed, so I am now relying on my notes here to jot down my reflections from that night. I don’t think that many of the people, who packed every seat in the auditorium, were expecting to hear a talk about black holes which did not include things like time-warp theory and wormholes. Dr. Kim Weaver’s talk about Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies was incredibly informative, as we were introduced to their realities and scientific facts.

Dr. Weaver began by telling us how black holes fall along the same chain of evolution as neutron stars and white dwarfs, in that they are the final stage of evolution for a star, and are among the remnants of star death. The process of formation for stars peaked about 5 million years ago, thereafter creating black holes as massive stars began to explode, forming black holes, and absorbing surrounding materials. Some black holes have such tiny diameters that they could share the living quarters of the width of New York City with the tiny neutron star. While others may be supermassive, ballooning outwards to a diameter the width of our solar system, containing as much mass as 100 billion suns.

These giants, as Dr. Kim Weaver described, were essentially the core of some galaxies, as black hole size is shown to be directly correlated to the galaxy size which surrounds it. What is so convenient about black holes is that they can be seen across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, and certain properties which were visible in the infrared or x-ray spectrum may not have been visible in the optical or radio, and visa versa, so we got to see the big picture of what makes a black hole.

There is a unified model of galaxies, displaying the accreting material
which surrounds the central black hole, in the shape of a torus, or a
donut shape. Dr. Weaver showed us how to read black hole signatures from a plot, in which we must subtract out the indications of stars, galaxy properties, and organic molecules. Black holes may be turned off and turned on as they are activated. The supermassive black hole is seen most often in young galaxies, with larger galaxies seeming to be the first to have formed in the universe (along with the bulk of all other large space-stuffs).

I was not disappointed to hear this exceptionally informative lecture on black holes rather than a theory-talk on things like timewarps. It’s refreshing to get an introduction to actual, known, and hands-on mechanics which would make even the most mysterious and powerful behemoths in the universe more familiar and approachable.

Those with further inquiries or curiosities should email Dr. Kimberly A. Weaver or Dominic Ludovici.
(Disclaimer: Please forgive any errors I may have made! Though happy to provide a blog review on the IYA Lecture Series, I am still but a lowly undergrad who appreciates corrections. Also, feel free to visit my own WVU webpage! :-) http://astro.wvu.edu/people/tabitha_smith )

Just about every seat was filled with people, from WVU students to a large population of scholarly looking individuals, who came to see Maura’s IYA Lecture. Energetically captivating the audience, it was almost as if Maura were a pulsar herself, making her the best person on Earth from whom to learn about these objects.

Out of all the objects in outer space, we may liken the pulsar as being the most relatable to us as human beings. From the first discovery of the Little Green Man 1 (LGM1) by Jocelyn Bell – and with it the yearning hope that pulsars signified extraterrestrial life, to their use as precise clocks today, pulsars help us to apply a heartbeat (pulses) to the cold of outer space. Like a pulsar veterinarian in the zoo of space objects, Maura told us of the history, unique composition, and applications that pulsars hold today.

If a pulsar could have perfect real estate in America, it may very well be New York City. It’s fast, always on time, and it’s diameter is about the size of the city itself. With approximately the mass of the sun compressed to this small space, a theoretical little teaspoon of pulsar material would weigh in close to that of an ocean-going super tanker. Due to the conservation of angular momentum after the death of a star, pulsars (like a spinning figure skater who pulls in their arms) rotate extremely fast, sometimes once every few milliseconds. Dr. McLaughlin let us listen to the pulse of the pulsars, some were a discernible, steady beat of once every second or more, while the millisecond pulsars were so fast that it sounded like a high pitched buzz. With such a tiny-heavy object spinning so rapidly, pulsars have behemoth magnetic fields: part of the reason why we are able to detect them, as these super-emissions travel to our planet like the beam from a lighthouse.

The millisecond pulsars are undergoing an exciting time, as a link in their evolutionary past is about to be revealed. In the lifetime of a pulsar, they eventually exhaust their kinetic energy, gradually drifting into the pulsar graveyard where the emissions are no longer strong enough to make it to Earth. Maura spoke of the way in which pulsars may become “recycled” as they begin to accrete the material of a companion. A particular millisecond pulsar with a period of 1.69 milliseconds with strange plot diagnostics, is beginning to herald the evidence of how a recycled pulsar becomes a pulsar once more through such a process.

Some important projects on the horizon for the pulsar astronomers here at West Virginia University include the Pulsar Search Collaboratory and the detection of gravitational waves. If Albert Einstein were alive today, he would be at WVU, proud of the work Maura McLaughlin and her group have been doing to prove his theories. The only pulsar-pulsar binary system known (of 2 pulsars in orbit around each other) is set to collide in about 85 million years or so, and with this collision will bring about the onset of gravitational waves rippling throughout space-time. If we are not around long enough to see this happen, gravitational waves may also be detected by noticing a slight, simultaneous change in all of the pulse arrival times from all the pulsars, as they are lifted in the gravitational tsunami, like buoys in the sea.

Those with further inquiries or curiosities should email Maura McLaughlin or Dominic Ludovici.
(Disclaimer: Please forgive any errors I may have made! Though happy to provide a blog review on the IYA Lecture Series, I am still but a lowly undergrad who appreciates corrections. Also, feel free to visit my own WVU webpage! :-) http://astro.wvu.edu/people/tabitha_smith )

The first International Year of Astronomy Lecture of the year 2009 at WVU went very well! There was a good turnout of an audience who came to witness the honorable Dr. John Littleton discuss Gamma Ray Bursts at Hodges Hall, room 260.

After one may listen to a lecture about gamma rays, one may ponder upon the safety of Earth and its proximity to exploding supernovae, showering gamma rays upon us, ionizing everything we know. Gamma rays stem from very dangerous, extreme environments. The first experiment in which gamma rays were produced by humans was a controlled one, located at the University of Chicago, but then following this, an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction was allowed to take place (the Trinity bomb, as it was known), thus resulting in the dawn of the age of atomic weaponry. From there, nuclear fusion bombs were tested with the introduction of the Ivy Mike bomb. So, I suppose if we should be worrying about gamma rays and how they may cause harm to us, it would most likely be from our man-made weapons than from the remnants released by the death of a faraway star.


Although we humans seem to make everything dangerous to us, including the tiniest of gamma rays, we at least make efforts in understanding them for scientific purposes. Dr. Littleton elaborated upon some important telescopes and observation equipment deployed by NASA (or as Dr. Littleton referred to as the National Acronym Society of America) that are being used to understand and detect gamma rays, such as the Swift and the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope.





With gamma ray inspired technology, astrophysicists in the field hope to discover emissions with a redshift of 20 or more, which would signify remnants of the big bang (13.5 billion light years + – in distance). Us unlearned folk to the ways of gamma ray research were also taught the proper way to read a code such as “GRB 080319B,” which means Gamma Ray Burst, March 19, 2008, B meaning the 2nd burst at this time (this explosion, data taken by Swift, is the most intrinsically bright explosion ever witnessed by humans, even though it took place 7.5 Billion light years away! The explosion could even have been visible to the naked eye, if one happened to be looking upward towards space. Imagine if it happened much closer. Our eyes would probably fizzle away, along with the Earth’s atmosphere).


Those with further inquiries or curiosities should email John Littleton or Dominic Ludovici.
(Disclaimer: Please forgive any errors I may have made! Though happy to provide a blog review on the IYA Lecture Series, I am still but a lowly undergrad who appreciates corrections. Also, feel free to visit my own WVU webpage! :-) http://astro.wvu.edu/people/tabitha_smith )