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Spotlight Live: Nomads of the Galaxy - Kavli Institute

May 17, 2012

An artistic rendition of a nomad object wandering the interstellar medium. The object is intentionally blurry to represent uncertainty about whether or not it has an atmosphere. A nomadic object may be an icy body akin to an object found in the outer Solar System, a more rocky material akin to asteroid, or even a gas giant similar in composition to the most massive Solar System planets and exoplanets. (Image by Greg Stewart/SLAC)

Planets simply adrift in space may not only be common in the cosmos; in the Milky Way Galaxy alone, their number may be in the quadrillions. Three experts discussed what this might mean, whether a nomad planet could drift close to our solar system, and how it is possible for a nomad planet to sustain life. 

See this roundtable discussion at the Kavli Foundation that features Harvard Professor Dimitar D. Sasselov and others. 

Spotlight Live: Nomads of the Galaxy

Black hole caught in a feeding frenzy

May 17, 2012

Scientists were able to observe the demise of a star and its digestion by a previously dormant supermassive black hole in real time. f a star passes too close to a black hole, tidal forces can rip it apart, and its constituent gases then swirl in toward the black hole. Friction heats the gases and causes them to glow. By searching for newly glowing supermassive black holes, astronomers can spot them in the midst of a feast. Harvard Professor Edo Berger is a co-author on this study. 

Read more at Astronomy Magazine or read the CFA press release. 

Credit: NASA/S. Gezari (JHU)/A. Rest (STScI)/R. Chornock (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)

One supernova type, two different sources

May 17, 2012

The Tycho supernova remnant is the result of a Type Ia supernova explosion. The explosion was observed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572. More than 400 years later, the ejecta from that explosion has expanded to fill a bubble 55 light-years across. In this image, low-energy X-rays (red) show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave - a shell of extremely energetic electrons. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/K.Eriksen et al.; Optical: DSS

CFA Clay Fellow R. Foley and Harvard Astronomy Professor R. Kirshner publish new findings. The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. They're bright enough to see across large distances, and similar enough to act as a "standard candle" - an object of known luminosity. The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the accelerating universe using Type Ia supernovae. However, an embarrassing fact is that astronomers still don't know what star systems make Type Ia supernovae.

See this article in Physics.org

CFA Press Release

Four Astronomy Undergraduates are Selected for Hoopes Prize

May 7, 2012

Eighty-nine seniors received this year’s prestigious Hoopes Prize for outstanding research or scholarly work, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Prize Office announced Friday.

The distinction—funded by the estate of Thomas T. Hoopes ’19—comes with a $4,000 award for students and a $1,000 honorarium for faculty advisors who nominated student theses or projects this spring, according to Tarik Umar ’10, an economics concentrator and a Hoopes winner.

Four prizes were awarded to Harvard Astronomy Undergraduates:

Dierickx, Marion Inge for her submission entitled "Constraining Local
Group Dark Matter Using M33's Past Orbit" - nominated by Professor Abraham
Loeb

Fogarty, Kevin Welsh for his submission entitled "Galaxy Cluster Mass
Proxies: Examining X-Ray and Sunyaev- Zel'dovich Effect Observations of
114 Galaxy Clusters in the Planck Early SZ Catalog" - nominated by Dr.
Christine Jones

Kruse, Ethan Alexander for his submission entitled "A Systematic Search
for New Kepler Circumbinary Planets" - nominated by Dr. Darin Ragozzine

Rice, Thomas Sean for his submission entitled "A Hierarchical Catalog of
Molecular Clouds in the Milky Way" - nominated by Professor Alyssa Goodman

Hoopes Prizes Awarded to Top Theses, Harvard Crimson

Professor David Charbonneau wins the Sackler Prize

April 23, 2012
Dave Charbonneau has won the Sackler Prize in Physics for 2012. This award recognizes Dave's seminal contributions to our understanding of extra-solar planets.
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