Antony Hewish
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Cambridge's 92 Nobel Prize Winners Part 2 - 1951 to 1974: from Crick and Watson to Dorothy Hodgkin
Cambridge's 92 Nobel Prize winners part 2 - 1951 to 1974: from Crick and Watson to Dorothy Hodgkin By Cambridge News | Posted: January 18, 2016 By Adam Care The News has been rounding up all of Cambridge's 92 Nobel Laureates, celebrating over 100 years of scientific and social innovation. ADVERTISING In this installment we move from 1951 to 1974, a period which saw a host of dramatic breakthroughs, in biology, atomic science, the discovery of pulsars and theories of global trade. It's also a period which saw The Eagle pub come to national prominence and the appearance of the first female name in Cambridge University's long Nobel history. The Gender Pay Gap Sale! Shop Online to get 13.9% off From 8 - 11 March, get 13.9% off 1,000s of items, it highlights the pay gap between men & women in the UK. Shop the Gender Pay Gap Sale – now. Promoted by Oxfam 1. 1951 Ernest Walton, Trinity College: Nobel Prize in Physics, for using accelerated particles to study atomic nuclei 2. 1951 John Cockcroft, St John's / Churchill Colleges: Nobel Prize in Physics, for using accelerated particles to study atomic nuclei Walton and Cockcroft shared the 1951 physics prize after they famously 'split the atom' in Cambridge 1932, ushering in the nuclear age with their particle accelerator, the Cockcroft-Walton generator. In later years Walton returned to his native Ireland, as a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, while in 1951 Cockcroft became the first master of Churchill College, where he died 16 years later. 3. 1952 Archer Martin, Peterhouse: Nobel Prize in Chemistry, for developing partition chromatography 4. -
Flares on Active M-Type Stars Observed with XMM-Newton and Chandra
Flares on active M-type stars observed with XMM-Newton and Chandra Urmila Mitra Kraev Mullard Space Science Laboratory Department of Space and Climate Physics University College London A thesis submitted to the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy I, Urmila Mitra Kraev, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Abstract M-type red dwarfs are among the most active stars. Their light curves display random variability of rapid increase and gradual decrease in emission. It is believed that these large energy events, or flares, are the manifestation of the permanently reforming magnetic field of the stellar atmosphere. Stellar coronal flares are observed in the radio, optical, ultraviolet and X-rays. With the new generation of X-ray telescopes, XMM-Newton and Chandra , it has become possible to study these flares in much greater detail than ever before. This thesis focuses on three core issues about flares: (i) how their X-ray emission is correlated with the ultraviolet, (ii) using an oscillation to determine the loop length and the magnetic field strength of a particular flare, and (iii) investigating the change of density sensitive lines during flares using high-resolution X-ray spectra. (i) It is known that flare emission in different wavebands often correlate in time. However, here is the first time where data is presented which shows a correlation between emission from two different wavebands (soft X-rays and ultraviolet) over various sized flares and from five stars, which supports that the flare process is governed by common physical parameters scaling over a large range. -
The Exploration of the Unknown
The exploration of the unknown K. I. Kellermann1 National Radio Astronomy Observatory Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected] J. M. Cordes Cornell University Ithaca, NY E-mail: [email protected] R.D. Ekers CSIRO Sydney, Australia E-mail: [email protected] J. Lazio Naval Research Lab Washington, D.C., USA E-mail: [email protected] Peter Wilkinson Jodrell Bank Center for Astrophsyics Manchester, UK E-mail: [email protected] Accelerating the Rate of Astronomical Discovery - sps5 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil August 11–14 2009 1 Speaker Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence. http://pos.sissa.it Summary The discovery of cosmic radio emission by Karl Jansky in the course of searching for the source of interference to telephone communications and the instrumental advances which followed, have led to a series of new paradigm changing astronomical discoveries. These include the non-thermal emission from stars and galaxies, electrical storms on the Sun and Jupiter, radio galaxies, AGN, quasars and black holes, pulsars and neutron stars, the CMB, interstellar molecules and giant molecular clouds; the anomalous rotation of Venus and Mercury, cosmic masers, extra-solar planets, precise tests of gravitational bending, gravitational lensing, the first experimental evidence for gravitational radiation, and the first observational evidence for cosmic evolution. These discoveries, which to a large extent define much of modern astrophysical research, have resulted in eight Nobel Prize winners. They were the result of the right people being in the right place at the right time using powerful new instruments, which in many cases they had designed and built. -
Google Enters Data Ecosystem Dataset Search Could Be Especially Helpful to Cross-Disciplinary Researchers
IN FOCUS NEWS recognizes that I did my most important work as a student.” The Breakthrough prizes were launched in 2012 and are funded by entrepreneurs includ- ing Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Awarded in fundamental physics, life sciences and math- ematics, they are usually handed out in Decem- DAVID HARTLEY/SHUTTERSTOCK DAVID ber, based on selections made after an open nomination process. But the selection commit- tee can decide to make special awards. Previ- ous special awards have been given to Stephen Hawking and to the Laser Interferometer Grav- itational-Wave Observatory collaboration for the discovery of gravitational waves. Pulsars are dense stars, consisting mostly of neutrons, that rotate at a precise rate, emitting Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, UK. radiation as they spin. In 1967, Bell Burnell, then a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, BREAKTHROUGH PRIZE UK, under astronomer Antony Hewish, was analysing hundreds of metres of chart paper containing data collected by a radio telescope in Cambridge when she noticed some mysterious Pulsar discoverer recurring smudges. She was able to characterize these as signs of radio pulses emanating from a spinning star: the pulsar. “The discovery is a wins $3-million prize testament to her curiosity, her determination and her creativity,” says Mingarelli. Jocelyn Bell Burnell to use cash to promote diversity in science. In 1974, Hewish shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with fellow radio astronomer Martin BY ZEEYA MERALI an astrophysicist at the Flatiron Institute in Ryle, for pioneering research in astrophysics. New York City. -
Uv Ceti Type Variable Stars Presented in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars
IX BULGARIAN-SERBIAN ASTRONOMICAL CONFERENCE: . ASTROINFORMATICS . Sofia, 2 – 4 July, 2014 UV CETI TYPE VARIABLE STARS PRESENTED IN THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF VARIABLE STARS Katya Tsvetkova Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Sofia, 2 – 4 July, 2014 IX BULGARIAN-SERBIAN ASTRONOMICAL CONFERENCE: . ASTROINFORMATICS . Abstract We present the place and the status of UV Ceti type variable stars in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS4, edition April 2013) having in view the improved typological classification, which is accepted in the already prepared GCVS4.2 edition. The improved classification is based on understanding the major astrophysical reasons for variability. The distribution statistics is done on the basis of the data from the GCVS4 and addition of data from the 80th Name List of Variable Stars - altogether 47 967 variable stars with determined type of variability. The class of the eruptive variable stars includes variables showing irregular or semi-regular brightness variations as a consequence of violent processes and flares occurring in their chromospheres and coronae and accompanied by shell events or mass outflow as stellar winds and/or by interaction with the surrounding interstellar matter. In this class the type of the UV Ceti stars is referred together with the types of Irregular variables (Herbig Ae/Be stars; T Tau type stars (classical and weak- line ones), connected with diffuse nebulae, or RW Aurigae type stars without such connection; FU Orionis type; YY Orionis type; Yellow -
Martin Ryle (1918–1984)
ARTICLE-IN-A-BOX Martin Ryle (1918–1984) Martin Ryle was one of the pioneers of the field of radio astronomy which made rapid progress in the decades immediately following the Second World War. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the technique known as ‘aperture synthesis’. This overcame what appeared to be a fundamental limitation of using radio waves. The smallest angle θmin (in ra- dians) at which details can be made out in an image of the sky made by a telescope depends on its diameter D and the wavelength λ. This is called the angular resolution and is given by the famous equation θmin = λ/D. Any finer detail such as the separation of two stars get blurred out. At a radio wavelength of 0.5 metres and a telescope of diameter of 50 metres, 1 this comes out to be 100 radian or a little more than half a degree – the size of the moon as seen from the Earth. The early pictures of the sky in radio waves were very crude compared to those made with visible light, typical wavelength 0.5 micrometres, a million times smaller. Making a radio dish of size even 100 times an optical telescope mirror would still leave radio pictures ten thousand times poorer than those made with visible light. Aperture synthesis broke this barrier, and today radio astronomy produces the sharpest images at any wavelength! The background to the emergence of radio astronomy, and this particular technique are explained in the article by Chengalur in this issue (p.165). -
GEORGE HERBIG and Early Stellar Evolution
GEORGE HERBIG and Early Stellar Evolution Bo Reipurth Institute for Astronomy Special Publications No. 1 George Herbig in 1960 —————————————————————– GEORGE HERBIG and Early Stellar Evolution —————————————————————– Bo Reipurth Institute for Astronomy University of Hawaii at Manoa 640 North Aohoku Place Hilo, HI 96720 USA . Dedicated to Hannelore Herbig c 2016 by Bo Reipurth Version 1.0 – April 19, 2016 Cover Image: The HH 24 complex in the Lynds 1630 cloud in Orion was discov- ered by Herbig and Kuhi in 1963. This near-infrared HST image shows several collimated Herbig-Haro jets emanating from an embedded multiple system of T Tauri stars. Courtesy Space Telescope Science Institute. This book can be referenced as follows: Reipurth, B. 2016, http://ifa.hawaii.edu/SP1 i FOREWORD I first learned about George Herbig’s work when I was a teenager. I grew up in Denmark in the 1950s, a time when Europe was healing the wounds after the ravages of the Second World War. Already at the age of 7 I had fallen in love with astronomy, but information was very hard to come by in those days, so I scraped together what I could, mainly relying on the local library. At some point I was introduced to the magazine Sky and Telescope, and soon invested my pocket money in a subscription. Every month I would sit at our dining room table with a dictionary and work my way through the latest issue. In one issue I read about Herbig-Haro objects, and I was completely mesmerized that these objects could be signposts of the formation of stars, and I dreamt about some day being able to contribute to this field of study. -
The Kepler Catalog of Stellar Flares James R
Western Washington University Masthead Logo Western CEDAR Physics & Astronomy College of Science and Engineering 9-20-2016 The Kepler Catalog of Stellar Flares James R. A. Davenport Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/physicsastronomy_facpubs Part of the Stars, Interstellar Medium and the Galaxy Commons Recommended Citation Davenport, James R. A., "The Kepler Catalog of Stellar Flares" (2016). Physics & Astronomy. 15. https://cedar.wwu.edu/physicsastronomy_facpubs/15 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Science and Engineering at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Physics & Astronomy by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Astrophysical Journal, 829:23 (12pp), 2016 September 20 doi:10.3847/0004-637X/829/1/23 © 2016. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. THE KEPLER CATALOG OF STELLAR FLARES James R. A. Davenport1 Department of Physics & Astronomy, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA Received 2016 June 20; revised 2016 July 7; accepted 2016 July 12; published 2016 September 16 ABSTRACT A homogeneous search for stellar flares has been performed using every available Kepler light curve. An iterative light curve de-trending approach was used to filter out both astrophysical and systematic variability to detect flares. The flare recovery completeness has also been computed throughout each light curve using artificial flare injection tests, and the tools for this work have been made publicly available. The final sample contains 851,168 candidate flare events recovered above the 68% completeness threshold, which were detected from 4041 stars, or 1.9% of the stars in the Kepler database. -
Nobel Laureates
Nobel Laureates Over the centuries, the Academy has had a number of Nobel Prize winners amongst its members, many of whom were appointed Academicians before they received this prestigious international award. Pieter Zeeman (Physics, 1902) Lord Ernest Rutherford of Nelson (Chemistry, 1908) Guglielmo Marconi (Physics, 1909) Alexis Carrel (Physiology, 1912) Max von Laue (Physics, 1914) Max Planck (Physics, 1918) Niels Bohr (Physics, 1922) Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (Physics, 1930) Werner Heisenberg (Physics, 1932) Charles Scott Sherrington (Physiology or Medicine, 1932) Paul Dirac and Erwin Schrödinger (Physics, 1933) Thomas Hunt Morgan (Physiology or Medicine, 1933) Sir James Chadwick (Physics, 1935) Peter J.W. Debye (Chemistry, 1936) Victor Francis Hess (Physics, 1936) Corneille Jean François Heymans (Physiology or Medicine, 1938) Leopold Ruzicka (Chemistry, 1939) Edward Adelbert Doisy (Physiology or Medicine, 1943) George Charles de Hevesy (Chemistry, 1943) Otto Hahn (Chemistry, 1944) Sir Alexander Fleming (Physiology, 1945) Artturi Ilmari Virtanen (Chemistry, 1945) Sir Edward Victor Appleton (Physics, 1947) Bernardo Alberto Houssay (Physiology or Medicine, 1947) Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius (Chemistry, 1948) - 1 - Walter Rudolf Hess (Physiology or Medicine, 1949) Hideki Yukawa (Physics, 1949) Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood (Chemistry, 1956) Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee (Physics, 1957) Joshua Lederberg (Physiology, 1958) Severo Ochoa (Physiology or Medicine, 1959) Rudolf Mössbauer (Physics, 1961) Max F. Perutz (Chemistry, 1962) -
Arxiv:1108.4369V1
THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, 2011, IN PRESS Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 03/07/07 TESTING A PREDICTIVE THEORETICAL MODEL FOR THE MASS LOSS RATES OF COOL STARS STEVEN R. CRANMER AND STEVEN H. SAAR Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 Draft version February 7, 2018 ABSTRACT The basic mechanisms responsible for producing winds from cool, late-type stars are still largely unknown. We take inspiration from recent progress in understanding solar wind acceleration to develop a physically motivated model of the time-steady mass loss rates of cool main-sequence stars and evolved giants. This model follows the energy flux of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence from a subsurface convection zone to its eventual dissipation and escape through open magnetic flux tubes. We show how Alfvén waves and turbulence can produce winds in either a hot corona or a cool extended chromosphere, and we specify the conditions that determine whether or not coronal heating occurs. These models do not utilize arbitrary normalization factors, but instead predict the mass loss rate directly from a star’s fundamental properties. We take account of stellar magnetic activity by extending standard age-activity-rotation indicators to include the evolution of the filling factor of strong photospheric magnetic fields. We compared the predicted mass loss rates with observed values for 47 stars and found significantly better agreement than was obtained from the popular scaling laws of Reimers, Schröder, and Cuntz. The algorithm used to compute cool-star mass loss rates is provided as a self-contained and efficient computer code. We anticipate that the results from this kind of model can be incorporated straightforwardly into stellar evolution calculations and population synthesis techniques. -
1 Case Study: Lise Meitner 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded
Case study: Lise Meitner 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to collaborator Otto Hahn After finishing her Ph.D. degree, Lise Mietner moved to Berlin, Germany. She came to study physics with Max Plank. This was where she met Otto Hahn. Hahn was working with famous chemist Emil Fischer when he met Lise Meitner. At that time, Fischer did not allow women in his laboratory. Instead, Hahn and Meitner created a workshop in the basement of the Chemical Institute just for Lise to work in. For 15 years Lise Mietner and Otto Hahn worked together. Then, in 1920, they decided to separate their research projects. During the years they worked together, they had an extremely close professional relationship but a far more formal personal one. Hahn respected her and her research but was unlikely to defend her when others questioned her ability, despite the fact that she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 13 times throughout her life. By colleagues and peers (including Albert Einstein) she was seen as far more capable and the principal figure in their collaborations. In 1934 Meitner recruited Hahn, along with Fritz Strassmann, to help her with her work on synthesizing “transuranic elements” (elements beyond uranium in the periodic table), as Meitner was more of a theorist than an experimental physicist. The rise of Nazi power in Germany brought great difficulties for Meitner due to her Jewish background. She could not present any of her own work, and Hahn could not mention her in presentations of work they completed together. She was forced to move to Sweden in 1938 to ensure that she could carry on working in some capacity. -
Slopes of Flare Energy Spectra
FREQUENCIES OF FLARE OCCURRENCE: INTERACTION BETWEEN CONVECTION AND CORONAL LOOPS Short title: Slopes of flare energy spectra D. J. Mullan1 and R. R. Paudel1 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware, Newark DE 19716 Corresponding author: [email protected] 1 Abstract Observations of solar and stellar flares have revealed the presence of power law dependences between the flare energy and the time interval between flares. Various models have been proposed to explain these dependences, and to explain the numerical value of the power law indices. Here, we propose a model in which convective flows in granules force the foot-points of coronal magnetic loops, which are frozen-in to photospheric gas, to undergo a random walk. In certain conditions, this can lead to a twist in the loop, which drives the loop unstable if the twist exceeds a critical value. The possibility that a solar flare is caused by such a twist-induced instability in a loop has been in the literature for decades. Here, we quantify the process in an approximate way with a view to replicating the power-law index. We find that, for relatively small flares, the random walk twisting model leads to a rather steep power law slope which agrees very well with the index derived from a sample of 56,000+ solar X-ray flares reported by the GOES satellites. For relatively large flares, we find that the slope of the power law is shallower. The empirical power law slopes reported for flare stars also have a range which overlaps with the slopes obtained here.