"Atronomers are proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the universe: It is possible that a fraction of dark matter particles may have a tiny electrical charge."
At the annual Awards Ceremony, Rita Fireman and Astronomy Chair Avi Loeb are seen presenting the Fireman Fellowship Award to Philip Cowperthwaite for this year's best dissertation in the field of Astrophysics at Harvard. This award is named in honor of Rita's husband, Edward Fireman, a long time physicist at the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory. Phil is a student of Edo Berger and will be starting a Hubble Post-doctoral Fellowship at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena.
At the annual Awards Ceremony for the Department of Astronomy Edo Berger presented Leo Goldberg prizes for excellence in a senior thesis to Danielle Frostig,graduating senior.
Edo Berger also presented the Leo Goldberg prize for excellence in a senior thesis to Eden Girma. Eden is also a recipient of a University Hoopes Prize for the project entitled “Astrometric Detection of Intermediate Mass Black Holes.”
"What is the distribution of sizes of black holes in our universe? Can black holes of any mass exist, or are there gaps in their possible sizes? The shape of this black-hole mass function has been debated for decades — and the dawn of gravitational-wave astronomy has only spurred further questions."
Garcia-Mejia: Last month, I was lucky enough to win a NASA lottery to attend the TESS launch as a VIP guest at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. As is the case with rocket launches, there were a series of launch windows starting on April 16, 2018, at 6:32pm. As hundreds of scientists were getting ready to board the buses that would take us from the KSC visitor complex to the viewing site on April 16, a NASA representative crushed our launch-viewing dreams with a simple two words: "launch scrubbed". A second launch window did not open until Wednesday, April 18 at 6:51pm...
Pierre Christian (Harvard PhD, 2018) delivers his Keto Award talk at the ITC Luncheon on May 3, 2018 "Detecting gravitational lensing of gravitational waves"
Astronomy 100 students went on a group trip to FLWO over spring break this year. They went to the University of Arizona mirror lab, Biosphere 2 and observed for 3 nights on the 48" and 60" telescope atop Mt. Hopkins.
"The first challenge in the hunt for life elsewhere in our universe is to decide where to look. In a new study, two scientists examine whether Sun-like stars or low-mass M dwarfs are the best bet for hosting exoplanets with detectable life."
Avi Loeb's lated Scientific American blog post explores the idea that, "A civilization in the habitable zone of a dwarf star like Proxima Centauri might find it hard to get into interstellar space with conventional rockets."
Avi Loeb offers his perspective on opening up academia. "Academic freedom is a precious commodity, critical to ensure that discovery of the truth is not encumbered by political or ideological forces. But this does not mean that intellectuals should hide in academic bunkers that, by protecting us from criticism by “non-experts,” allow ego to flourish and enable a focus on questions that are not actually relevant to anyone else. We experts should have to explain ourselves."
It is a sad day for the world of physics and humanity.
Stephen embodied the superiority of mind over matter. He demonstrated that the human spirit can overcome all physical limitations and that the human mind can comprehend the deepest secrets of nature. With his optimistic mindset, he discovered that even black hole can shine brightly. His work on black holes and the early universe had a great impact our current research in these fields.
Stephen visited us for a few weeks in April 2016 for the inauguration of the Black Hole...
Avi Loeb has written another great essay, "Astronomers have recently determined that rare elements such as gold and uranium are produced as a result of rapid capture of free neutrons during the merger of two neutron stars. Neutron stars are the densest stars known, having the size of a city (12 kilometers) and up to twice the mass of the sun, with the density of an atomic nucleus. A teaspoon of neutron star material weighs a trillion kilograms, as much as a tall mountain on Earth."
"An experiment to estimate when stars began to form in the Universe suggests that gas temperatures just before stars appeared had fallen well below predicted limits, and that dark matter is not as shadowy as was thought."
"For the first time, scientists may have detected hints of the universe’s primordial sunrise, when the first twinkles of starlight appeared in the cosmos."
"It is easy for professors to hide deep inside the trenches of their expertise—bunkers that protect them from criticism by “non-experts” and allow them to promote their egos without supervision. True, academic freedom is a precious commodity that should be held sacred in order to enable discovery of the truth in the face of sociological forces and ideological dogma."
![Still from a simulation showing how black holes might interact in the chaotic cores of globular clusters. [Carl Rodriguez/Northwestern Visualization]](http://static.projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/styles/os_square_100_100/public/fig1-1-676x336.png?m=1526310517&itok=ji_-npHA "Sizes of Black Holes Throughout the Universe")
![are the best targets in the search for primitive life. [NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech]](http://static.projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/styles/os_square_100_100/public/fig1-10-702x336.jpg?m=1525273270&itok=brZi-CNM "Where Should We Look for Life?")
