Astronomy Club is the only club at San Diego Mesa College that allows you to explore all that lies beyond the planet on which we live. Between the study, exploration and discovery of countless planets, stars, galaxies, comets, asteroids, and the infinite concept of space itself, its easy to see why astronomy is such a uniquely sought-after field of study. Marie Yokers, a student majoring in astrophysics, is the Astronomy Clubs current president. Upon attending the virtual presentation given by Jonny Kim, An Evening with an Astronaut on April 29, I noticed the event was organized by the San Diego Mesa Astronomy Club and reached out to its president.

Astronomy Club was originally founded in the fall semester of 2018 by Alexander Beltzer-Sweeney as founding president, with Ana Parra, Alex Hewett and Danny Rosales fulfilling the remaining crucial positions within the club.

The idea of a club based in science may sound off-putting to some, but Yokers extended this message to those unsure, I want to mimic what Dr. Kim had said, which was, Space is for everyone. It doesnt belong to anyone. The demographic absolutely reflects this sentiment. People come in from all walks of life, all ages, and all different experiences.

Space is vast, unknown, abstract, daunting and even confusing to some, but why is it important? Astronomy may not have daily applications like mathematics or English, but rather encompasses a broader realm of both academics and interest.

Yokers described the importance of this complex subject stating, Astronomy has played such a deep role in the development of the human race with agriculture, travel, culture, religion, etc. This begs the question, if astronomy is a more complex, all-encompassing subject, then how is it any less important than other subjects deemed essential? It isnt any less important. Astronomy is a field of study that observes all that lies outside of our atmosphere, and utilizes the knowledge and practices of physics, biology, geology and mathematics to continually broaden our understanding of the universe. These key traits, the nagging acknowledgement that there are many things we dont have answers for and the fascination with the possibility of life found outside of the world we know make astronomy a study, field, and practice all its own.

According to American Astronomical Society, astronomy is a rather small field in terms of career, which incidentally leads to high levels of competition for open positions.

If you browse classes online, Astronomy is a class offered at Mesa, so how is Astronomy club different from the class? First, its a club, and beyond that, Astronomy Club has its own constitution which includes the following two goals, To promote interest in astronomy and related space sciences on the San Diego Mesa College campus. Provide opportunities for members to learn more about astronomy & related space sciences through club outings, lectures, work-based learning opportunities, and internships.

Astronomy Club operates through a balance of volunteering, education and discussions. Due to COVID-19 shifts have been made. If you find yourself wondering what types of things happen in Astronomy Club, Yokers identified a few including film discussions, attending talks such as the one held at the Fleet Science Center earlier this year, attending the Astronomy Associations Star Parties which allows amateur astronomers to observe, practice and congregate in a fun learning environment, and various other activities. In the words of Yokers, Basically, if its space-related, we try to jump in to learn and have fun!

After taking a two-year hiatus break from school to work, Yokers returned in 2018 to revisit her interest in astrophysics and took Astronomy 101 at Mesa. About her choice to enroll in the class, It was the first class that I actually had a passion to do well in, and it was the first class that I really connected with the professor (Dr. Stojimirovic). I confided in Dr. Stojimirovic about wanting to pursue astrophysics as a career and she really helped push me in the correct direction.

It was at this point that Yokers found a role in Astronomy Club as treasurer and grew with it. Yokers went on to say, If I did not take that chance- I would not have met the great network of people that I have so much to credit to today.

Busy class or work schedules, the idea exploring personal interests, and the pressure to pursue the right education and career path can get overwhelming. Finding encouragement or inspiration from your family, a club, a friend or professor can give you the extra boost you may have needed.

At the moment, COVID-19 has taken a toll on classes, jobs, student clubs, businesses, and leisurely activities alike, yet strides are being made to ensure Astronomy Clubs continuance. Dont settle for locking yourself in your room with your now dust-coated textbooks, Yokers encouraged, My motto for the club post-virus has been keep moving forward. Would I step away from my physics homework for this event? If its a yes, then the event is a go.

At this time, Astronomy Club consists mainly of movie nights, game nights and discussion, with the occasional lecture found easily online. Among the present changes, Yokers mentioned the voting of new officers is hopefully taking place within the next two weeks, inviting anyone interested to reach out to the club email, astroclubmesa@gmail.com.

Astronomy Club meetings happen every Wednesday from 5:30 7 p.m., through Zoom for the time being. Once students are able to return to campus, the club meetings will be at the STEM Center.

With many student clubs derailed by COVID-19, and social distancing leading to feelings of loneliness and even lack of direction or drive, Astronomy Club will take you to the cosmos.

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Exploring Astronomy Club and enduring COVID-19 The Mesa Press - Mesa Press

Featured image: An artists impression depicts the orbits of the two stars and the black hole in the HR 6819 triple system, made up of an inner binary with one star (orbit in blue) and a newly discovered black hole (orbit in red), as well as a third star in a wider orbit (also in blue), in this image released on May 6, 2020. Photo: ESO/L. Calcada/Handout via Reuters

Washington: Astronomers have spotted the closestblackholeto Earth ever discovered and are surprised about its living arrangements residing harmoniously with two stars in a remarkable celestial marriage that may end in a nasty breakup.

Theblackhole, at least 4.2 times the mass of the sun, is gravitationally bound to two stars in a so-called triple system roughly 1,000 light years from Earth, researchers said on Wednesday.

Just around the corner in cosmic terms, said Chile-based European Southern Observatory astronomer Thomas Rivinius, lead author of the study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

Blackholes are extraordinarily dense objects possessing gravitational pulls so powerful that not even light can escape. Some are monstrous like the one at our galaxys centre 26,000 light years from Earth that is four million times the suns mass.

Also read: A Surprisingly Big Black Hole Might Have Swallowed a Star From the Inside Out

Garden variety so-called stellar-massblackholes like the newly discovered one have the mass of a single star. This one probably began its life as a star up to 20 times the suns mass that collapsed into ablackholeat the end of its relatively short lifespan.

This triple system, called HR 6819, can be seen from Earths southern hemisphere with the naked eye, in the constellation Telescopium. Until now, the closest-knownblackholewas one perhaps three times further away.

Only a few dozen stellar-massblackholes previously were known. But there may be hundreds of millions or even a billion of them in the Milky Way, said astrophysicist and study co-author Petr Hadrava of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

Thisblackhole, detected using an observatory in Chile, is minding its manners and has not shredded its two partners: stars about five or six times the mass of the sun. At least not yet.

The formation of ablackholeis a violent process, and most models would not have predicted a triple system could survive that but rather would fly apart, Rivinius said.

Theblackholeforms a pair with one of the two stars, as near to one another as the Earth is to the sun. The other star is much further away, orbiting the pair. This star spins so rapidly that it is misshapen, bulging at the equator.

The two stars are sufficiently distant from theblackholethat it is not pulling material from them. But in a few million years the closer star is expected to grow in size as part of its life cycle.

What happens then is uncertain, Rivinius said. The most spectacular outcome would be if theblackholeends up with that star inside it.

(Reuters)

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Astronomers Find Earth's Closest Black Hole (So Far) - The Wire

One of the deepest mysteries in physics, known as the Hubble tension, could be explained by a long-since vanished form of dark matter.

The Hubble tension, as Live Science has previously reported, refers to a growing contradiction in physics: The universe is expanding, but different measurements produce different results for precisely how fast that is happening. Physicists explain the expansion rate with a number, known as the Hubble constant (H0). H0 describes an engine of sorts thats driving things apart over vast distances across the universe. According to Hubbles Law (where the constant originated), the farther away something is from us, the faster its moving.

And there are two main ways of calculating H0. You can study the stars and galaxies we can see, and directly measure how fast theyre moving away. Or you can study the cosmic microwave background (CMB), an afterglow of the Big Bang that fills the entire universe, and encodes key information about its expansion.

Related: The 11 Biggest Unanswered Questions About Dark Matter

As the tools for performing each of these measurements have gotten more precise, however, its become clear that CMB measurement and direct measurements of our local universe produce incompatible answers.

Researchers have offered different explanations for the disparity, from problems with the measurements themselves to the possibility we live in a low-density bubble within the larger universe. Now, a team of physicists is suggesting that the universe might have fundamentally changed between the time after the Big Bang and today. If an ancient form of dark matter decayed out of existence, that loss would have changed the mass of the universe; and with less mass, there would be less gravity holding the universe together, which would have impact the speed at which the universe expands leading to the contradiction between the CMB and the direct measurements of the universes expansion rate.

There was a time, decades ago, when physicists suspected dark matter might be hot zipping around the universe at close to the speed of light, said Dan Hooper, head of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and co-author of the new paper. But by the mid-1980s they were convinced that this unseen stuff that makes up most of the mass of the universe is likely slower-moving and cold. Physicists refer to the mostly widely-accepted model of the universe as Lambda-CDM, for Cold Dark Matter.

Still, Hooper told Live Science, the idea of warm dark matter a form of dark matter that falls somewhere in between the hot and cold models still gets some traction in the physics world. Some physicists speculate that dark matter is made of sterile neutrinos, for example, theoretical ghostly particles that barely interact with matter. This hypothetical dark matter would be much warmer than typical Lambda-CDM models allow, but not hot.

Another possibility is that most of the dark matter is cold, but maybe some of it is warm. And in our paper, the stuff thats warm isnt even stuff thats around today. Its stuff that was created in the early universe and after thousands or tens of thousands of years it started to decay. Its all gone by now, Hooper said.

Related: 11 fascinating facts about our Milky Way galaxy

That lost dark matters mass would have represented a significant chunk of the total mass of the universe when it existed, leading to a different expansion rate when the CMB formed just after the Big Bang. Now, billions of years later, it would be long gone. And all the stars and galaxies we can measure would be moving away from us at speeds determined by the universes current mass.

When you measure the local Hubble constant youre really measuring that thing: Youre measuring how fast things are moving apart from one another, youre measuring how fast space is expanding, Hooper said. But translating the CMB data into an expansion rate requires using a model, such as the Lambda-CDM. So if you get different measurements from the local measurements and the CMB measurement, maybe that models wrong.

Local measurements measurements of the region of space close enough to Earth for astronomers to precisely measure the speed and distance of individual objects dont require cosmological models to interpret, so theyre typically seen as more straightforward and robust.

Some researchers have still suggested there may be problems with our measurements of the local universe. But most attempts to resolve the Hubble tension involve tweaking Lambda-CDM somehow. Usually, they add something to the model that changes how the universe expands or evolves. This paper, Hooper said, is another step down that road.

Im not going to give the impression that it makes everything great, he said. Its not a perfect concordance among the data by any means. But it makes the tension less severe I dont know of any solution to this, other than the measurements are wrong, that reduces the tension [as much as youd need to fully solve the problem].

Hoopers original proposal to his collaborators on the paper didnt involve warm dark matter at all, he said. Instead, he imagined a second, lost form of cold dark matter. But when they started to test that idea, he said, they found that this extra cold dark matter was screwing up the whole structure of the universe. Stars and galaxies formed in ways that didnt match what we see around us in the universe today. The decayed, lost form of dark matter, they concluded, had to be warm if it was going to fit observations.

The new paper doesnt determine what particles the lost dark matter might be made of, but strongly suggests that warm dark matter might have been made up of sterile neutrinos particles that other physicists also believe are likely out there.

Its definitely the thing that requires the fewest number of tooth fairies to make work, Hooper said. But other possibilities exist.

Whatever it is though, it must have turned into something even more exotic and feebly interacting when it decayed. Matter cant just stop existing; it has to transform into something else. If that something else were distributed differently through the universe, or interacted differently with other particles in the universe, that would change how the universe expanded.

So wed be surrounded in a bath of this dark radiation, Hooper said. Were already surrounded in a bath of neutrinos so this would just be a little bit more of that kind of stuff. Some sort of bath that fills the universe today of very, very inert forms of matter.

For now, researchers dont have methods for probing the for this sort of hidden radiation, Hooper said, so the idea remains speculative. The paper was published to the arXiv database April 13.

Originally published on Live Science.

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A long-lost type of dark matter may resolve the biggest disagreement in physics - Times Famous

On a regular weekday during the COVID-19 pandemic, graduate students like Heather McCambly and Nikki McDaid-Morgan are teaching classes, grading and meeting with students while providing childcare.

McCambly, a SESP Ph.D. student who is in her fourth year studying racial justice, is collecting data on the pandemic while full-time parenting her 4-year-old daughter and ensuring she is emotionally supported.

Im trying to figure out how to help my kid keep learning and also mostly just be OK, McCambly said. (My child is) definitely feeling whats going on in the world and on this planet right now. And she needs a lot of attention.

Life-work balance has become difficult for many amid coronavirus, as remote work pushes the office into living spaces. Parents have had to balance childcare duties with professional duties. Women already bore the brunt of domestic work in heterosexual couples a dynamic highlighted further by the pandemic.

McCambly recently took her daughter to see a doctor because she was showing symptoms related to stress part of which comes from the drastic transition from daycare to homeschooling due to the pandemic.

Going to the doctors office during the pandemic, McCambly said, didnt feel safe. The experience compounded the stress.

I might put being a researcher before most things in my life, McCambly said. And for better or for worse.

Between McCambly and her husband, she said he performs more childcare than she does. Yet she told The Daily she still finds herself completing less and less academic work.

Shes not alone. Academic journal committees across subjects have seen the number of article submissions by female-identifying researchers plummet, with a deputy editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science noting that she has never seen anything like it.

Even though not all female-identifying researchers are mothers or caregivers for elderly parents, they are more burdened with completing domestic work in heterosexual relationships, with childcare being one such task.

Disciplines such as astrophysics have witnessed up to 50 percent productivity loss, with submissions by female researchers to academic journalists noticeably decreasing. Comparative Political Studies, a journal that publishes on a subject less disproportionately male-dominated than astrophysics, has seen a consistent number of submissions by women this year and a 50 percent increase by men.

McDaid-Morgan, another SESP Ph.D. student who has two children, said she said she felt hyper-productive before the coronavirus closed Northwesterns campus.

Now, her timeline has been pushed back. McDaid-Morgans dissertation proposal, which she she was due to defend last month, has been delayed. Her 4-year-old is bedwetting again, partially due to stress. On top of this, the student is expected to produce the same level of academic work.

My identity is wrapped up in being a researcher and an educator and a learning scientist, McDaid-Morgan said. Now that we cant be on campus anymore, my own mental health has declined and its hard for me to get work done.

In the past, McDaid-Morgan tried to separate work from home because doing work at home may lead to the children feeling neglected. Now, she said she has no choice.

Both doctoral candidates told The Daily that they are a skewed example, as their partners play an equal or larger role in parenting and other household duties. They said they know a colleague whose partner is an essential worker and has to raise three children.

At the same time, both McCambly and McDaid-Morgans husbands are temporarily unemployed due to the pandemic. Academia is already a precarious workforce. If they graduate on course, they may not be entering a desirable job market.

Its really taking a lot out of me emotionally to reconcile, McCambly said. Ive done all the right things, Im continuing to do the right thing. I love my work. And I cannot count on my university right now to kind of have my back in this moment (and) long term in terms of making sure that I can pursue the academic career I came here to pursue.

Northwestern University Graduate Workers have been advocating for an additional year of funding since April through the hashtag #universal1yr and other organizing efforts.

The University has not acted to extend an additional year of funding to graduate students in light of the pandemic, despite receiving numerous endorsements of #universal1yr from the political science department, African American Studies department, the School of Communication and more.

During NUGWs May 1 virtual sit-in, Alcia Hernndez Grande, a Ph.D. candidate, said that doing graduate work and taking care of her young daughter full-time during a pandemic has taken away time from her studies.

As a graduate student (and) parent, my work time is limited, Hernndez Grande said. I am trying to do the best that I can, but without childcare, without the possibility of childcare, without knowing when childcare might be available, I am at the mercy of nap-times, I am at the mercy of my own energy levels as I try to do full-time parenting.

On the other side of the situation, the loss of time also takes away formative opportunities for children. McDaid-Morgan, who is from the Shoshone-Bannock Nation, helps design a summer program for indigenous youths. There, her children are able to interact and be part of the community. Due to the coronavirus, the camp is not happening this summer.

Adults are dealing with similar losses. McDaid-Morgan and McCambly, who is Latinx, are from communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. McDaid-Morgan said that Native Americans in Seattle who she collaborates with for research told her that instead of the funding and personal protective gear tribes asked for, the federal government sent them body bags.

At Northwestern, McDaid-Morgan used to go to the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research to meet up with members of the community. Now, she cant and said she is tired of sitting in front of computers to socialize.

Were all missing our community, McDaid-Morgan said. Its hard, and then its lonely.

Email: yunkyokim2022@u.northwestern.eduTwitter: @yunkyomoonk

Related Stories: Graduate workers hold #universal1yr rally on International Workers Day to highlight academic worker concerns Faculty and staff juggle parenting with remote work

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Student mothers describe increased stressors as COVID-19 mixes home and work - Daily Northwestern

Artificial intelligence, ethics in technology, the origins of life, astrophysical data these exciting but complex subjects are the focus of the University of WisconsinMadisons fourth round of cluster hires, the Office of the Provost announced today.

The hires, which are made as a group across departments rather than individually within departments, build upon the universitys existing strengths. They foster collaborative research, education and outreach by creating new interdisciplinary areas of knowledge.

UWMadison first launched the Cluster Hiring Initiative in 1998 as an innovative partnership between the university, state and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. In its first phase, the initiative authorized nearly 50 clusters, adding nearly 150 new faculty members through several rounds of hiring. In 2017, the Office of the Provost authorized phase two of the initiative, with a goal of supporting at least 12 clusters.

Previous clusters were announced in April 2019 andSeptemberandFebruaryof 2018. This latest round brings the total of clusters supported to 19. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, each cluster will be given at least two years to complete its hiring plans. New cluster competition will be suspended for at least the next academic year.

The latest cluster hires are:

Artificial Intelligence in Precision Medical Imaging and Diagnostics

Proposal advanced by: Thomas Grist, professor of radiology, medical physics and biomedical engineering; Kristin Eschenfelder, associate director of the School of Computing, Data and Information Sciences; Rob Nowak, professor of electrical and computer engineering, computer sciences, statistics and biomedical engineering; Vallabh Sambamurthy, dean of the Wisconsin School of Business.

Through new approaches to data acquisition and analysis, advances in artificial intelligence are poised to revolutionize the way in which medical imaging affects clinical care and scientific discoveries in medicine. This cluster outlines three key faculty positions that will be foundational to an expansion of UWMadisons leadership in the field. It will also address urgent opportunities for curriculum development in areas of interest to multiple colleges and schools on campus and extramural entities.

Next-generation medical imaging uses AI techniques to improve its diagnostic accuracy and predictive power, enabling advances in basic understanding of human disease, treatment monitoring and long-term surveillance of disease.

Collaborations like those forged by the cluster hire will contribute to the realization of the full potential of AI for precision medical imaging and diagnostics.

Ethics in Computing, Data, and Information

Proposal advanced by: Alan Rubel, professor in the Information School and director of the Center for Law, Society and Justice; Michael Titelbaum, Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy; Loris DAntoni, professor of computer sciences; Aws Albarghouthi, professor of computer sciences; Noah Weeth Feinstein, director of the Holtz Center for Science, Technology and Society and a professor of curriculum and instruction and community and environmental sociology.

Computational systems, data analytics, artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision systems affect large and important facets of society, including governance, education, commerce, democracy and media. These tools can be used to advance social goods, but they can also go awry, used for bad purposes by bad actors. The tools can also reflect and engender unfair social structures.

To effectively address ethical issues in AI, data, and information systems requires collaboration between scholars working on computational systems, on the social facets of information technologies, and on conceptual and moral questions about how such systems function and how they are used.

UWMadison is well-positioned to be a world leader in these areas because of its current strengths and existing collaborations. The cluster proposes hiring three faculty members working on distinct facets of the ethics of computing, data and information.

Exploring the Origins of Life Across the Galaxy

Proposal advanced by: Sebastian Heinz, professor and chair of astronomy; David Baum, professor of botany; Judith Burstyn, professor and chair of chemistry; Greg Tripoli, professor and chair of atmospheric and oceanic sciences; Jeff Hardin, professor and chair of integrative biology; Ken Cameron, professor and chair of botany; Chuck DeMets, professor and chair of geoscience; Annie Bauer, assistant professor of geoscience; Tristan LEcuyer, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences; Robert Mathieu, professor of astronomy; Steve Meyers, professor of geoscience; Phillip Newmark, professor of integrative biology; Andrew Vanderburg, assistant professor of astronomy; Susanna Widicus Weaver, professor of chemistry; John Yin, professor of chemical and biological engineering; Tehshik Yoon, professor of chemistry; Ke Zhang, assistant professor of astronomy.

Questions about the origins and nature of life are as old as humanity itself. Today, the search for understanding the origin of life extends to the cosmos, as recent work has uncovered countless planets orbiting stars throughout the Milky Way, each potentially bearing life of its own. But how do we detect life on planets we can never visit? And how do we know how common life might be if we dont know how it arose on Earth?

The search for evidence of life on other planets is by nature interdisciplinary. Chemistry, biology and geoscience combine to understand how life arose on our planet and how it might have done so on other worlds, while astronomy and atmospheric sciences can probe for evidence of that life from light-years away. This cluster will allow the hiring of researchers who straddle these fields and who can bridge the gaps between expertise across the participating departments. The group will also establish the Wisconsin Center for Origins Research to house new and existing faculty and encourage new collaborations in astrobiology.

Breakthrough Science with Multi-messenger Astrophysical Data

Proposal advanced by: Albrecht Karle, professor of physics; Keith Bechtol, assistant professor of physics; Francis Halzen, professor of physics; Kael Hanson, professor of physics; Sebastian Heinz, professor and chair of astronomy; Sebastian Raschka, assistant professor of statistics; Justin Vandenbroucke, associate professor of physics; Jun Zhu, professor and chair of statistics; Ellen Zweibel, professor of astronomy.

For millennia, humans learned about the night sky only from the light from distant stars. But recently, astrophysicists have gained access to signals that go beyond light. These messengers about the universe include gravitational waves and neutrinos ghostly particles that rarely interact with other matter. UWMadison is the headquarters of the worlds largest neutrino observatory, IceCube, which surveys a billion tons of Antarctic ice for signs of rare neutrino collisions.

Now, the IceCube project is preparing for a major upgrade to generation two. This cluster hire will invest in the astronomy, physics and statistics faculty necessary to continue and expand UWMadisons leadership in multi-messenger astrophysics. This data-heavy field requires collaborations between these three fields to probe the constant stream of information recorded by IceCube and to find the sources of the neutrinos that stream toward Earth. That analysis can help answer fundamental questions about the physical laws governing the universe and help us understand complex phenomena like black holes and cosmic rays.

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UWMadison announces its fourth round of cluster hires - University of Wisconsin-Madison

Galaxies such as our own Milky Way are more likely to harbor intelligent, technologically advanced civilizations.

Giant elliptical galaxies are not as likely as previously thought to be cradles of technological civilizations such as our own, according to a recent paper by a University of Arkansas astrophysicist.

The paper, published May 1 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, contradicts a 2015 study that theorized giant elliptical galaxies would be 10,000 times more likely than spiral disk galaxies such as the Milky Way to harbor planets that could nurture advanced, technological civilizations.

The increased likelihood, the authors of the 2015 study argued, would be because giant elliptical galaxies hold many more stars and have low rates of potentially lethal supernovae.

But Daniel Whitmire, a retired professor of astrophysics who is an instructor in the U of A mathematics department, believes that the 2015 study contradicts a statistical rule called the principle of mediocrity, also known as the Copernican Principle, which states that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, an object or some property of an object should be considered typical of its class rather than atypical.

Historically, the principle has been employed several times to predict new physical phenomena, such as when Sir Isaac Newton calculated the approximate distance to the star Sirius by assuming that the sun is a typical star and then comparing the relative brightness of the two.

The 2015 paper had a serious problem with the principle of mediocrity, said Whitmire. In other words, why dont we find ourselves living in a large elliptical galaxy? To me this raised a red flag. Any time you find yourself as an outlier, i.e. atypical, then that is a problem for the principle of mediocrity.

He also had to show that most stars and therefore planets reside in large elliptical galaxies in order to nail down his argument that the earlier paper violated the principle of mediocrity.

According to the principle of mediocrity, Earth and its resident technological society should be typical, not atypical, of planets with technological civilizations elsewhere in the universe. That means that its location in a spiral-shaped disk galaxy should also be typical. But the 2015 paper suggests the opposite, that most habitable planets would not be located in galaxies similar to ours, but rather in large, spherical-shaped elliptical galaxies.

In his paper, Whitmire suggests a reason why large elliptical galaxies may not be cradles of life: They were awash in lethal radiation when they were younger and smaller, and they went through a series of quasar and star-burst supernovae events at that time.

The evolution of elliptical galaxies is totally different than the Milky Way, said Whitmire. These galaxies went through an early phase in which there is so much radiation that it would just completely have nuked any habitable planets in the galaxy and subsequently the star formation rate, and thus any new planets, went to essentially zero. There are no new stars forming and all the old stars have been irradiated and sterilized.

If habitable planets hosting intelligent life are unlikely in large elliptical galaxies, where most stars and planets reside, then by default galaxies such as the Milky Way will be the primary sites of these civilizations, as expected by the principle of mediocrity, Whitmire said.

Reference: The habitability of large elliptical galaxies by Daniel P Whitmire, 13 April 2020, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staa957

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Search For Intelligent Alien Life: Galaxies That Are More Likely to Harbor Technologically Advanced Civilizations - SciTechDaily

Not the Fast Radio Burst. Radio waves arent visible to the eye. This is something else, from the Hubble Space Telescope. See a spectrum of the burst below. Image via NASA/ ESA/ Hubble/ ScienceAlert.

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short, intense bursts of radio waves lasting perhaps a thousandth of a second, coming from all over the sky and of unknown origin.In a shock discovery that could help to solve one of astronomys greatest mysteries on April 28, 2020 astronomers used an Astronomers Telegram to announce a Fast Radio Burst originating from inside our Milky Way galaxy. Thats a first. All other FRBs have been extragalactic, that is to say outside our galaxy. Even more importantly, the astronomers think theyve also identified the source of the burst.

Explanations have ranged from neutron stars to supernovae to the inevitable aliens.

FRBs were first detected in 2007. This new detection of an FRB is, in astronomical terms, very close to home. Astronomers found it using the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope in Canada, an instrument designed specifically to study phenomena such as FRBs in order to answer major questions in astrophysics. This particular telescope has greatly increased the bursts detection rate since its first light in September 2017.

At the time of the April 28 signal, the telescope was not pointing straight at the source. But the signal was so strong the telescope captured it, so to speak, out of the corner of its eye. The signal was of sufficient strength to be detected from another galaxy (indicating it is the same phenomenon as those earlier extragalactic bursts detected from our galaxy), and it had the typical duration of a Fast Radio Burst.

The day before, on April 27, 2020, the Swift Burst Alert Telescope had detected a series of gamma-ray bursts originating from the same point in the sky as the FRB. Those gamma rays are associated with a known object, labeled SGR 1935+2154, a so-called Soft Gamma Repeater. This object is a type of stellar remnant known for periodically generating bursts of gamma rays. The distance to this object has been estimated at about 30,000 light-years. For comparison, the Milky Way galaxy is over 150,000 light-years across.

Excitingly, at the same time there was a burst of high-energy X-rays from the same point in the sky. The X-ray burst was observed by ground- and space-based X-ray telescopes. No FRB had ever been associated with gamma- or X-rays before, making this observation, if indeed it was of a FRB, something completely new.

Now you need to know that X-ray and gamma-ray bursts are not unusual in observations of magnetars.

Artists concept of an eruption on a magnetar. The Fast Radio Burst detected in our galaxy may be associated with these sorts of eruptions. Image via NASA Goddard Visualization Studio.

SGR 1935+2154 is believed to be a magnetar, a type of neutron star with a hypermagnetic field strong enough to pull the keys from your pocket from as far away as the moon!

While the reason for this ultra-strong magnetic field a thousand times stronger than that of a normal neutron star is unknown, astronomers theorize that FRBs might be produced when the crust of the neutron star suffers a starquake as a result of tension between the neutron stars intense gravity and its magnetic field. This tension may be suddenly, and incomprehensibly violently, released in the starquake.

This may mean that the neutron stars crust, thought to be a million times stronger than steel, slips by just a millimeter; however, this tiny shift may be sufficient to generate a brief burst of radio energy so powerful it can be detected from other galaxies, which we detect as an FRB.

Maybe! It seems possible, anyway, and, in astrophysics, whats possible is the name of the game.

However, this detection does not mean that astronomers are ready to confirm that all FRBs originate from magnetars. The burst received by CHIME was at the low end of the signal strength historically associated with FRBs, which may or may not be of significance. As yet, astronomers have not analyzed the waveform of the signal to see if it matches that from FRBs. However, if this analysis and ongoing observations of magnetar SGR 1935+2154 do demonstrate conclusively that magnetars are the origin of Fast Radio Bursts, one of astronomys greatest mysteries will have been solved.

The CHIME radio telescope in Canada. Its specifically designed to study objects such as Fast Radio Bursts. Image via CHIME.

Bottom line: Fast Radio Bursts are mysterious, short, intense bursts of radio waves coming from locations all over the sky. Before April 28, all the FRBs we knew were thought to come from outside our galaxy. The April 28 FRB, which apparently originated within our galaxy, will help astronomers unravel thorny questions in astrophysics.

Andy Briggs has been a science and technology communicator for more than 30 years, mainly in the fields of information technology, astronomy and astrophysics. He has been involved with many astronomy societies in the UK and is a frequent contributor to Astronomy Ireland magazine. He also lectures regularly on astrophysics-related themes such as gravitational waves and black holes. Andy lives in Catalonia, Spain, with his wife and daughter.

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A mystery solved? Fast Radio Burst detected within Milky Way - News Info Park

Starlink satellites are easily spotted in the right conditions. Photo by Forest Katsch on Unsplash, Santa Cruz CA

Low-Earth orbit keeps getting busier. Last month, SpaceX sent up its seventh group of 60 router-satellites to join the Starlink constellation. There are over 400 Starlink satellites in orbit now, with a goal to have 1,000 in orbit by the end of the year. SpaceX has permission from the FCC to launch 12,000 in total, all with the purpose of providing high-speed broadband internet to places that couldn't get it before.

Starlink orbits much lowerthan most satellites, and have a propulsion system that brings them back down to Earth after a few months.

They're also unexpectedly shiny. Especially right after launch, the little metal birds are easily spotted with the naked eye in their low orbit. They fly through the night sky in little trains, one after the other, spaced about the same distance apart. UFO-reporting websites have been flooded with the new sightings

While satellite-spotting has turned into a bit of a hobby in the past few months, many astronomers are worriednow and for the future. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics tweeted:

Still others comment:

SpaceX plans to launch the next Starlink cluster with sunshades that will dim their brightnessin the night sky. If those shades work, now might be the best time for space enthusiasts to catch a glimpse of the orderly little shooting stars beaming internet down to earth.

There are tons of resources for tracking stargazing phenomena. A great place to follow Starlink is on the Heavens-Above website. They've got a specific Starlink trackerthat gives you a forecast when you put in your location. From my spot in Virginia, it looks like I can see some Starlink activity next month. But in Colorado, there's visible activity this week.

You can also check out N2Y0.com to automatically scan the forecast for bright satellites with your browser's coordinates. You can also search for "Starlink" at CalSky.com for predictions.

Satellite tracker Marco Langbroek gave this advice to space.com:

"For prospective observers, I would advise to see whether Calsky of Heavens-Above issue predictions for your location, and allow for several minutes uncertainty in the pass time. Iexpect them to be bright now they are still very low, but having binoculars handy would be a good idea. Make sure your eyes are dark adapted (i.e. spent some 125 minutes in the dark at least, avoiding lamplight)."

Do you have any interest in spotting the satellite march? Have you seen them already? Comment below!

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Here's How to Spot the Starlink Satellite Cluster in the Sky This Month - Our Community Now at Maryland

The black hole is about 1,000 light-years away, but it's close enough that the stars around it can be seen by the naked eye.

Meet your new but shy galactic neighbor: A black hole left over from the death of a fleeting young star.

European astronomershave found the closestblack hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye.

Of course, close is relative on the galactic scale. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away and each light-year is 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers). But in terms of the cosmos and even the galaxy, it is in our neighborhood, said European Southern Observatory astronomer Thomas Rivinius, who led the study published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The previous closest black hole is probably about three times further, about 3,200 light-years, he said.

The discovery of a closer black hole, which is in the constellationTelescopium in the Southern Hemisphere, hints that there are more of these out there. Astronomers theorize there are between 100 million to 1 billion of these small but dense objects in the Milky Way.

The trouble is we cant see them. Nothing, not even light, escapes a black holes gravity. Usually, scientists can only spot them when they're gobbling up sections of a partner star or something else falling into them. Astronomers think most black holes, including this newly discovered one, don't have anything close enough to swallow. So they go undetected.

Astronomers found this one because of the unusual orbit of a star. The new black hole is part of what used to be a three-star dance in a system called HR6819. The two remaining super-hot stars aren't close enough to be sucked in, but the inner star's orbit is warped.

Using atelescope in Chile, they confirmed that there was something about four or five times the mass of our sun pulling on the inner star. It could only be a black hole, they concluded.

Outside astronomers said that makes sense.

It will motivate additional searches among bright, relatively nearby stars, said Ohio State University astronomer Todd Thompson, who wasnt part of the research.

Like most of these type of black holes this one is tiny, maybe 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter.

Washington, D.C. would quite easily fit into the black hole, and once it went in it, would never come back, said astronomer Dietrich Baade, a study co-author.

These are young hot stars compared to our 4.6 billion-year-old sun. Theyre maybe 140 million years old, but at 26,000 degrees F (15,000 degrees C) they are three times hotter than the sun, Rivinius said. About 15 million years ago, one of those stars got too big and too hot and went supernova, turning into the black hole in a violent process, he said.

It is most likely that there are black holes much closer than this one, said Avi Loeb, director of Harvards Black Hole Initiative, who wasnt part of the study. If you find an ant while scanning a tiny fraction of your kitchen, you know there must be many more out there.

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Astronomers find closest known black hole to Earth, hints of more - KING5.com

Publish Date: Wed, 06 May 2020 03:47 PM IST

New Delhi | Jagran Lifestyle Desk:The final super moon of the year will be seen on Thursday 7th May, worldwide. That will exactly be the time when a full moon is expected to occur at the closest point to Earth during its orbit, making it appear way too larger and brighter than usual.

The phenomenon, though will start appearing from sunset itself, but will be visible to its fullest glory during 10:30-11:30 PM, Indian Standard Time according to NASA.

Also Read: Super Flower Moon 2020: When, where and how to watch last 'Super Moon' of this year

The May moon has earned its "flower" nickname as a dedication to the spring in the Northern Hemisphere part of the globe. NASA said in a statement that the nomenclature traces back to the Maine Farmers of USAs Almanac in the 1930s.

The full moon measures about 0.52 degrees wide in the night sky at an average, and on May 7 it will be about 33 arc minutes (0.55 degrees) across. A clenched fist can get you the reference for it measures about 10 degrees wide at your arm's length, a report from space.com stated.

Though binoculars and telescopes are not specifically required, but these devices can certainly provide a more unadulterated view of the magnificent event.

Such super moon events are usually the affairs full of glitz among the astrophysics enthusiasts, but the Space Centers in India and beyond are closed for the normal public in the wake of novel Coronavirus pandemic.

So your homes balcony or buildings terrace is all youve got for a super moon view this time amid the lockdown in-place to contain the spread of coronavirus pandemic.

Also Read: Super Flower Moon 2020: From Aries to Virgo to Pisces, how supermoon will affect your zodiac sign

According to CGTN, while a super moon is considered less serious and scientific than an eclipse, it represents a chance to encourage people to start looking at the moon. The next full super moon won't come around until late April in 2021.

Posted By: Talib Khan

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Super Flower Moon 2020: All you need to know about the last super moon of this year - Jagran English

If you are searching for homeschooling activities for your children or looking to try a new hobby during the pandemic, now might be the perfect time to turn your gaze toward the heavens as the weather gets warmer. From stars and galaxies to the cultural importance of the night sky, theres a fascinating universe out therewaiting to be explored andastronomers from the University of Toronto can help guide you on your journey.

The moon, for example, is obviously easy to spot and can be followed through its phases. Percy, who is also affiliated with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education andhelped develop curriculum for elementary and high school students, suggests budding astronomers keep a moon diary, noting their observations. Arethere lighter and darker regions visible or are they able to glimpse a face on the surface of the moon? Its good practice, he says, because science is based on recording observations.

Those searching out planets will find Venus shining brightly throughout May, very low in the west after sunset. Mercury, which is usually too close to the sun to be seen, will appear close to Venus on May 21, Percy says. To know what to look for when and where, its best to use a star chart. Percy recommendsSkymapsor an interactive star chart fromSky and Telescope.

For those who cant get out to view the night sky or who simply want to learn more, Dunlap is a co-sponsor ofDiscover the Universe, a program that offers daily astronomy-at-home talks at 2 p.m. daily for young people. The universitys partner,The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada(RASC), offers regular presentations, with aneducation sectionthat contains activities and links that are especially useful for children learning online. U of T astronomers, meanwhile, have createdCosmos on Your Couch, a series of weekly talks on YouTube.

Today at 7 p.m., Percy will be talking about archeoastronomy during a Cosmos on Your Couch livestream(above). He says he will explore astronomy of pre-technology civilizations, which used the daytime and nighttime sky as a calendar and compass.

It was high-tech for them, he says, noting earlier civilizations found direction and marked time by looking at the sky. Clocks would be set based on the position of the sun and sea captains had to learn basic astronomy because they navigated by the stars, Percy says.

People also looked to the heavens for religious reasons.

It is preserved today in the names of the planets because they were assumed to have a connection with the gods, Percy says, noting that Mars is the Roman god of war, Venus the goddess of beauty, and so on. Much of what can be seen in the sky is similarlyimbued with cultural meaning. Different cultures see different things, Percy says.

When physical distancing measures are lifted, Percy suggests attending one of RASCs star parties atThe Riverwood Conservancy. Its anopportunity for those who have become familiar with the sky to see different telescopes in action and talk to fellow stargazers.

Be curious, Percy advises. Theres a whole universe up there.

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Lessons from above: U of T astronomers help bring the heavens into homes during COVID-19 - News@UofT

Posted on Apr 27, 2020 in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Science

Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions, says astrophysicist John Webb at the University of New South Wales about the universal constant which appears inconstant at the outer fringes of the cosmos, it occurs in only one direction. .That standard model itself is built upon Einsteins theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.

Those looking forward to a day when sciences Grand Unifying Theory of Everything could be worn on a t-shirt may have to wait a little longer as astrophysicists continue to find hints that one of the cosmological constants is not so constant after all.

In a paper published in Science Advances, scientists from UNSW Sydney reported that four new measurements of light emitted from a quasar 13 billion light years away reaffirm past studies that found tiny variations in the fine structure constant.

UNSW Sciences Professor Webb says the fine structure constant is a measure of electromagnetismone of the four fundamental forces in nature (the others are gravity, weak nuclear force and strong nuclear force).

The fine structure constant is the quantity that physicists use as a measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force, Professor Webb says. Its a dimensionless number and it involves the speed of light, something called Plancks constant and the electron charge, and its a ratio of those things. And its the number that physicists use to measure the strength of the electromagnetic force.

The electromagnetic force keeps electrons whizzing around a nucleus in every atom of the universewithout it, all matter would fly apart. Up until recently, it was believed to be an unchanging force throughout time and space. But over the last two decades, Professor Webb has noticed anomalies in the fine structure constant whereby electromagnetic force measured in one particular direction of the universe seems ever so slightly different.

Great Unknown Question The End of Spacetime

We found a hint that that number of the fine structure constant was different in certain regions of the universe. Not just as a function of time, but actually also in direction in the universe, which is really quite odd if its correct but thats what we found.

Ancient Quasars Offer Clues

Ever the sceptic, when Professor Webb first came across these early signs of slightly weaker and stronger measurements of the electromagnetic force, he thought it could be a fault of the equipment, or of his calculations or some other error that had led to the unusual readings. It was while looking at some of the most distant quasarsmassive celestial bodies emitting exceptionally high energyat the edges of the universe that these anomalies were first observed using the worlds most powerful telescopes.

The most distant quasars that we know of are about 12 to 13 billion light years from us, Professor Webb says.

So if you can study the light in detail from distant quasars, youre studying the properties of the universe as it was when it was in its infancy, only a billion years old. The universe then was very, very different. No galaxies existed, the early stars had formed but there was certainly not the same population of stars that we see today. And there were no planets.

He says that in the current study, the team looked at one such quasar that enabled them to probe back to when the universe was only a billion years old which had never been done before. The team made four measurements of the fine constant along the one line of sight to this quasar. Individually, the four measurements didnt provide any conclusive answer as to whether or not there were perceptible changes in the electromagnetic force. However, when combined with lots of other measurements between us and distant quasars made by other scientists and unrelated to this study, the differences in the fine structure constant became evident.

Our weird universe

And it seems to be supporting this idea that there could be a directionality in the universe, which is very weird indeed, Professor Webb says. So the universe may not be isotropic in its laws of physicsone that is the same, statistically, in all directions. But in fact, there could be some direction or preferred direction in the universe where the laws of physics change, but not in the perpendicular direction. In other words, the universe in some sense, has a dipole structure to it.

In one particular direction, we can look back 12 billion light years and measure electromagnetism when the universe was very young. Putting all the data together, electromagnetism seems to gradually increase the further we look, while towards the opposite direction, it gradually decreases. In other directions in the cosmos, the fine structure constant remains just thatconstant. These new very distant measurements have pushed our observations further than has ever been reached before.

In other words, in what was thought to be an arbitrarily random spread of galaxies, quasars, black holes, stars, gas clouds and planetswith life flourishing in at least one tiny niche of itthe universe suddenly appears to have the equivalent of a north and a south. Professor Webb is still open to the idea that somehow these measurements made at different stages using different technologies and from different locations on Earth are actually a massive coincidence.

This is something that is taken very seriously and is regarded, quite correctly with scepticism, even by me, even though I did the first work on it with my students. But its something youve got to test because its possible we do live in a weird universe.

But adding to the side of the argument that says these findings are more than just coincidence, a team in the US working completely independently and unknown to Professor Webbs, made observations about X-rays that seemed to align with the idea that the universe has some sort of directionality.

I didnt know anything about this paper until it appeared in the literature, he says.

And theyre not testing the laws of physics, theyre testing the properties, the X-ray properties of galaxies and clusters of galaxies and cosmological distances from Earth. They also found that the properties of the universe in this sense are not isotropic and theres a preferred direction. And lo and behold, their direction coincides with ours.

Answers the Cosmic Why

While still wanting to see more rigorous testing of ideas that electromagnetism may fluctuate in certain areas of the universe to give it a form of directionality, Professor Webb says if these findings continue to be confirmed, they may help explain why our universe is the way it is, and why there is life in it at all.

For a long time, it has been thought that the laws of nature appear perfectly tuned to set the conditions for life to flourish. The strength of the electromagnetic force is one of those quantities. If it were only a few percent different to the value we measure on Earth, the chemical evolution of the universe would be completely different and life may never have got going. It raises a tantalising question: does this Goldilocks situation, where fundamental physical quantities like the fine structure constant are just right to favor our existence, apply throughout the entire universe?

Shape-Shifting Cosmos Physicists Seek the Question to Which the Universe is the Answer

If there is a directionality in the universe, Professor Webb argues, and if electromagnetism is shown to be very slightly different in certain regions of the cosmos, the most fundamental concepts underpinning much of modern physics will need revision.

Our standard model of cosmology is based on an isotropic universe, one that is the same, statistically, in all directions, he says. That standard model itself is built upon Einsteins theory of gravity, which itself explicitly assumes constancy of the laws of Nature. If such fundamental principles turn out to be only good approximations, the doors are open to some very exciting, new ideas in physics.

Webbs team believe this is the first step towards a far larger study exploring many directions in the universe, using data coming from new instruments on the worlds largest telescopes. New technologies are now emerging to provide higher quality data, and new artificial intelligence analysis methods will help to automate measurements and carry them out more rapidly and with greater precision.

Sources: Michael R. Wilczynska et al. Four direct measurements of the fine-structure constant 13 billion years ago, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay9672. K. Migkas et al. Probing cosmic isotropy with a new X-ray galaxy cluster sample through the LXT scaling relation, Astronomy & Astrophysics (2020). DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201936602

The Daily Galaxy, Max Goldberg, via University of New South Wales

Excerpt from:

The Inconstant Universe Weird Findings Point to a New Physics - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

A nova is a dramatic episode in the life of a binary pair of stars. It's an explosion of bright light that can last weeks or even months. And though they're not exactly rare - there are about 10 each year in the Milky Way - astronomers have never watched one from start to finish.

Until now.

A nova occurs in a close binary star system, when one of the stars has gone through its red giant phase. That star leaves behind a remnant white dwarf. When the white dwarf and its partner become close enough, the massive gravitational pull of the white dwarf draws material, mostly hydrogen, from the other star.

That hydrogen accretes onto the surface of the white dwarf, forming a thin atmosphere. The white dwarf heats the hydrogen, and eventually the gas pressure is extremely high, and fusion is ignited. Not just any fusion: rapid, runaway fusion.

Artist's impression of a nova eruption, showing the white dwarf accreting matter from its companion. (Nova_by K. Ulaczyk, Warschau Universitt Observatorium)

When the rapid fusion ignites, we can see the light, and the new hydrogen atmosphere is expelled away from the white dwarf into space. In the past, astronomers thought these new bright lights were new stars, and the name "nova" stuck.

Astronomers now call these types of nova "classical" novae. (There are also recurrent novae, when the process repeats itself.)

This is an enormously energetic event, that produces not only visible light, but gamma rays and x-rays too. The end result is that some stars that could only be seen through a telescope can be seen with the naked eye during a nova.

All of this is widely accepted in astronomy and astrophysics. But much of it is theoretical.

Recently, astronomers using the BRITE (BRIght Target Explorer) constellation of nanosatellites were fortunate enough to observe the entire process from start to finish, confirming the theory.

BRITE is a constellation of nanosatellites designed to "investigate stellar structure and evolution of the brightest stars in the sky and their interaction with the local environment," according to the website.

They operate in low-Earth orbit and have few restrictions on the parts of the sky that they can observe. BRITE is a coordinated project between Austrian, Polish, and Canadian researchers.

This first-ever observation of a nova was pure chance. BRITE had spent several weeks observing 18 stars in the Carina constellation. One day, a new star appeared. BRITE Operations Manager Rainer Kuschnig found the nova during a daily inspection.

"Suddenly there was a star on our records that wasn't there the day before," he said in a press release. "I'd never seen anything like it in all the years of the mission!"

Werner Weiss is from the Department of Astrophysics at the University of Vienna. In a press release, he emphasized the significance of this observation.

A shows bright V906 Carinae labelled with a white arrow. B and C show the star before and after the V906 Carinae nova. (A. Maury and J. Fabrega)

"But what causes a previously unimpressive star to explode? This was a problem that has not been solved satisfactorily until now," he said.

The explosion of Nova V906 in the constellation Carina is giving researchers some answers and has confirmed some of the theoretical concept behind novae.

V906 Carinae was first spotted by the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae. Fortunately, it appeared in an area of the sky that had been under observation by BRITE for weeks, so the data documenting the nova is in BRITE data.

"It is fantastic that for the first time a nova could be observed by our satellites even before its actual eruption and until many weeks later," says Otto Koudelka, project manager of the BRITE Austria (TUGSAT-1) satellite at TU Graz.

V906 Carinae is about 13,000 light years away, so the event is already history. "After all, this nova is so far away from us that its light takes about 13,000 years to reach the earth," explains Weiss.

The BRITE team reported their findings in a new paper. The paper is titled "Direct evidence for shock-powered optical emission in a nova." It's published in the journal Nature Astronomy. First author is Elias Aydi from Michigan State University.

"This fortunate circumstance was decisive in ensuring that the nova event could be recorded with unprecedented precision," explains Konstanze Zwintz, head of the BRITE Science Team, from the Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck.

Zwintz immediately realised "that we had access to observation material that was unique worldwide," according to a press release.

Novae like V906 Carinae are thermonuclear explosions on the surface of white dwarf stars. For a long time, astrophysicists thought that a nova's luminosity is powered by continual nuclear burning after the initial burst of runaway fusion. But the data from BRITE suggests something different.

In the new paper, the authors show that shocks play a larger role than thought. The authors say that "shocks internal to the nova ejecta may dominate the nova emission."

These shocks may also be involved in other events like supernovae, stellar mergers, and tidal disruption events, according to the authors. But up until now, there's been a lack of observational evidence.

"Here we report simultaneous space-based optical and gamma-ray observations of the 2018 nova V906 Carinae (ASASSN-18fv), revealing a remarkable series of distinct correlated flares in both bands," the researchers write.

Since those flares occur at the same time, it implies a common origin in shocks.

"During the flares, the nova luminosity doubles, implying that the bulk of the luminosity is shock powered." So rather than continual nuclear burning, novae are driven by shocks.

"Our data, spanning the spectrum from radio to gamma-ray, provide direct evidence that shocks can power substantial luminosity in classical novae and other optical transients."

In broader terms, shocks have been shown to play some role in events like novae. But that understanding is largely based on studying timescales and luminosities. This study is the first direct observation of such shocks, and is likely only the beginning of observing and understanding the role that shocks play.

In the conclusion of their paper the authors write: "Our observations of nova V906 Car definitively demonstrate that substantial luminosity can be produced - and emerge at optical wavelengths - by heavily absorbed, energetic shocks in explosive transients."

They go on to say that: "With modern time-domain surveys such as ASAS-SN, the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, we will be discovering more - and higher luminosity - transients than ever before. The novae in our galactic backyard will remain critical for testing the physical drivers powering these distant, exotic events."

This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.

Continued here:

Astronomers Have Watched a Nova Go From Start to Finish For The First Time - ScienceAlert

The National Science Foundation recently awarded researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Louisiana State University, Georgia Tech and West Virginia University grants totaling more than $2.3 million to support further development of the Einstein Toolkit.

The Einstein Toolkit is a community-developed code for simulating the collisions of black holes and neutron stars, as well as supernovas and cosmology. The RIT numerical Relativity group, including Associate Professor Yosef Zlochower, Professor Manuela Campanelli and Professor Joshua Faber, have been part of the Einstein Toolkit consortium since its creation more than a decade ago.

The Einstein Toolkit has been critical to our simulations of binary black hole and binary neutron star mergers and our modeling of gravitational waveforms for LIGO, said Zlochower, principal investigator of the grant to RIT.

One of the key targets of modern numerical relativity simulations is the mergers of black holes and neutron stars, particularly the extreme mass ratio limit of binary black holes and evolutions of the hypermassive remnant from neutron star mergers. These challenging simulations will require exascale-level resources, and the NSF award to RIT of a grant of nearly $440,000 will support RIT students and faculty as they work to make the toolkit scale to hundreds of thousands of processors on some of the largest super computers in the world.

The Einstein Toolkit is used extensively by graduate and undergraduate students at RIT working with faculty at the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation, according to co-PI Faber.

The Einstein Toolkit has been a critical resource for the Center for over a decade, added co-PI Campanelli, director of the CCRG.

Zlochower noted that these efforts will have an impact on numerical relativity groups around the world, since the Toolkit is open source and available for use by researchers and students at institutions ranging in size from small colleges up to large research universities. For more information, visit the Einstein Toolkit website.

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NSF funds RIT researchers to develop code for astrophysics and gravitational wave calculations - RIT University News Services

Noah Wolfe was self-quarantining in the Homewood Suites hotel in Davidson, North Carolina, last month when the email arrived to tell him he won the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship.

He immediately set about informing his family and friends from the seclusion of his room a call to his mom, a text to a friend, a Slack message to his academic adviser Professor Carla Frhlich.

Wolfe juggles ideas and scientific theories as easily as he does communication platforms. The focus of his research is computational astrophysics, but hes also founder of an environmental nonprofit and believes strongly in outreach and education.

Im starting to realize that I really love these kinds of interdisciplinary intersections, says the sophomore and Park Scholar, who is majoring in physics and math. I dont know how environmental justice and public education exactly fit with theoretical astrophysics, but Im really excited to see what it looks like.

Wolfe studies supernovas, the explosion of stars. They occur when a star runs out of nuclear fuel at its core, cools down and collapses under its own gravitational force; or when a white-dwarf star absorbs too much matter from another star in its orbit, setting off a nuclear reaction. They are impossible to recreate on Earth, Wolfe says, the equivalent of taking something many times bigger than the sun and compressing it into the size of Manhattan Island in seconds.

Scientists use computational astrophysics to make mathematical models of supernovas and then change variables to try to learn more about them. Wolfe compares the process to cooking: Like chefs, astrophysicists experiment with ingredients, only their ingredients are things like the general theory of relativity, hydrodynamics and information about miniscule particles called neutrinos.

If we want to model the supernova, we dont have infinite computation time, so we need to create a recipe, tailored to answering a specific question, Wolfe says. What if we use general relativity code that we know is accurate? And lets say we ignore some of the hydrodynamics because we dont think its that important. And lets make a good guesstimate of how the neutrino stuff works, because it might be important. You mix all of that together, and then you actually model the evolution of this system.

Astrophysicists then compare the results of the computation to existing observations. Nearby supernovas are uncommon, but they provide plenty of fodder when they do happen. A supernova 200,000 light-years away detected in 1987 is still yielding data, Wolfe says.

A supernova doesnt affect life on Earth, and Wolfe acknowledges his research likely wont solve todays scientific problems.

To be honest and this is something Ive personally struggled with a little bit the time horizon for when this research will be applicable is up in the air, he says. And its probably after I die, to be frank.

One topic that interests Wolfe is the behavior of nuclear matter in neutron stars, which form when a collapsing star compresses into a small parcel so dense that an amount the size of a sugar cube would weigh 1 billion tons, according to NASA. Thats why Wolfe finds supernovas so exciting: They are laboratories where multiple types of physics intersect under extreme conditions.

You need to understand everything from fundamental particle physics in the center of the neutron star all the way into hydrodynamics and fluid flow in the materials surrounding it as its going crazy, Wolfe says.

To study supernovas is to push the boundaries of what scientists know about physics, he says, even if that means storing the knowledge for later.

This is the challenge of all fundamental research, he says. It says were just trying to answer these questions regardless of whether or not well know if theyll have an impact in 10 or 15 years.

Wolfe isnt waiting for his research to make a difference in the world; hes trying to make one now.

Hes president of NCStates Astronomy Club, where everyone is invited to learn more about the universe. In January, he founded a nonprofit organization called Scivir (pronounced SEE-ver) to gather data on air quality in North Carolina. Scivirs goal is to ensure everyone has clean air one day regardless of socioeconomic status.

Then theres the reason why Wolfe was self-quarantining when he received his Goldwater Scholarship email. He flew through Seattle during an outbreak of COVID-19 on the way back from an Alternative Service Break trip to Hoonah, Alaska. That trip helped Wolfe realize how much he values education and outreach. He says the scholarship will help him achieve his goal of getting his Ph.D. in astrophysics and becoming a professor and mentor. He likes the idea of teaching undergraduates while using the position to welcome newcomers to the world of physics.

Education is super important, equal to the value of research, he says. Im only so smart and theres only so much I can do. Its really important that we encourage the next generation of scientists to figure out what I miss.

More:

Experimenting in the Universe's Laboratory - NC State News

Galaxies grow large by eating their smaller neighbours, new research reveals.

Exactly how massive galaxies attain their size is poorly understood, not least because they swell over billions of years. But now a combination of observation and modelling from researchers led by UNSWs Dr Anshu Gupta from Australias ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) has provided a vital clue.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, the scientists combine data from an Australian project called the Multi-Object Spectroscopic Emission Line (MOSEL)survey with a cosmological modelling program running on some of the worlds largest supercomputers in order to glimpse the forces that create these ancient galactic monsters.

By analysing how gases within galaxies move, Dr Gupta said, it is possible to discover the proportion of stars made internally and the proportion effectively cannibalised from elsewhere.

We found that in old massive galaxies those around 10 billion light years away from us things move around in lots of different directions, she said.

That strongly suggests that many of the stars within them have been acquired from outside. In other words, the big galaxies have been eating the smaller ones.

Because light takes time to travel through the universe, galaxies further away from the Milky Way are seen at an earlier point in their existence. Dr Guptas team found that observation and modelling of these very distant galaxies revealed much less variation in their internal movements.

We then had to work out why older, closer big galaxies were so much more disordered than the younger, more distant ones, said second author ASTRO 3Ds Dr Kim-Vy Tran, who like Dr Gupta, is based at UNSW.

The most likely explanation is that in the intervening billions of years the surviving galaxies have grown fat and disorderly through incorporating smaller ones. I think of it as big galaxies having a constant case of the cosmic munchies.

Distribution of dark matter particles around the galaxy. Big galaxies have been eating the smaller ones, this piece of research shows.

The research team which included scientists from other Australian universities plus institutions in the US, Canada, Mexico, Belgium and the Netherlands ran their modelling on a specially designed set of simulations known as IllustrisTNG.

This is a multi-year, international project that aims to build a series of large cosmological models of how galaxies form. The program is so big that it has to run simultaneously on several of worlds most powerful supercomputers.

The modelling showed that younger galaxies have had less time to merge with other ones, said Dr Gupta.

This gives a strong clue to what happens during an important stage of their evolution.

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Hungry galaxies grow fat on the flesh of their neighbours - UNSW Newsroom

UAH achieved a record $109.7 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2019.

Michael Mercier | UAH

The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) achieved a record $109.7 million in research and development expenditures in fiscal year 2019 (FY19), according to the National Science Foundations (NSF) Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) survey.

The universitys federal research expenditures have increased by 24 percent over two years. UAH had active contracts and research partnerships with more than 90 commercial companies during 2019. The universitys five-year contract and grant research total is $489 million.

This achievement indicates the degree of trust our collaborators place in UAH research endeavors, says Dr. Robert Lindquist, vice president for research and economic development. UAH has a long history of science and engineering research and working together with our federal government and private sector partners to find creative solutions for some of the nations most challenging technological issues.

Five UAH research thrusts rank in the top 20 nationally, according to the National Science Foundation:

Key research areas at UAH include:

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UAH reports record research results of $109.7 million in 2019: NSF survey - UAH News

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT) Eyewitness News Joe Bird talks with NASAs Director of Physics about the 30th Anniversary of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, what its done for science, and what we might be able to see with it in the future.

TRANSCRIPTION

Joe Bird: Well, a special something is turning 30 today. NASAs iconic Hubble Space Telescope commemorates three decades of discovery. And, joining is live this morning via Skype from NASA is NASAs Director of Astrophysics, Dr. Paul Hertz. You are responsible for the agencys research programs and missions necessary to discover how the universe began, how the universe works what a job you have, Dr. Hertz!

Dr. Paul Hertz: Thank you very much. Its got to be the coolest job in the world.

Joe Bird: I tell you, it sounds absolutely fantastic. Lets talk about Hubble, because I know you use Hubble a lot. Youve seen a lot of the images Hubble sends us. The views of the universe that we get from Hubble they have not only changed the way we think of space, but they have basically even rewritten some science books. What are some of the most important discoveries?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Well, when we launched Hubble, we werent sure how fast the universe was expanding. One of the first things we did was measure that very accurately, and by it backwards, we now know the universe is 13.8 billion years old. When we launched Hubble, we didnt know if black holes were common or rare in the universe. Hubble discovered that every galaxy has a super-massive black hole. Black holes are as common as galaxies in our universe. And, when Hubble launched, we hadnt discovered a single planet around another star. Now, we know there are planets around just about every star. Weve found over 5,000 of them. Hubble was the first telescope to observe the atmosphere of a planet around another star, was able to measure water and carbon monoxide in that planets atmosphere. So, thats just a few of the things that Hubble has done.

Joe Bird: And, the list really continues on with Hubble, and what its done and what it will do. So, lets talk closer to home really fast here, with this one. So, Hubble has also taken a look at planets right here in our region. What have we learned from our solar system, and even our own moon? What changes have we seen over all these years?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Well, Hubble has been watching our solar system for the entire 30 years its been up there. Weve seen the great red spot on Jupiter that Galileo discovered. Weve seen it shrinking over time. One of the moons of Jupiter, Europa, we have seen water plumes erupting from the surface of that moon, with Hubble, telling us about the ocean under the surface. And, we can see that theres even salt in those water plumes, letting us know there might be nutrients in that ocean. Maybe conducive for life, somewhere else in our solar system. When we launched Hubble, we only knew about one moon of Pluto. Hubble discovered four more moons of Pluto. We now know of five. So, when the new Horizon spacecraft flew by, it was able to study all of those moons, with Hubble. And, you mentioned our own moon. Because Hubble has an ultraviolet camera, and, its one of the very few there are, because ultraviolet light cant reach the surface of our Earth, the atmosphere absorbs it. So, a space telescope can take pictures in ultraviolet. With ultraviolet pictures, we can find resources on the moon, such as minerals, or possible water, that astronauts will be able to take advantage of when the U.S. returns to the moon.

Joe Bird: Now, we didnt almost have these nice, sharp images today, because there was a flaw when Hubble made it up into space with those mirrors. Thanks to astronauts, that was all fixed. So, Hubble lives on to 30. How is it doing?

Dr. Paul Hertz: Hubble is doing great! As you pointed out, its been serviced by astronauts five times, actually. The last servicing was in 2009. At that time, the astronauts upgraded all the science instruments, replaced all the aging systems lie batteries and gryos that hold the telescope steady. So, Hubble is in great shape right now. Its a hundred times more powerful now than when we launched it, because of those upgraded instruments. Everything is working fine. In fact, everything is still redundant. So, we can suffer the eventual aging failures. Were confident Hubble will last through the 2020s. well be able to use it in conjunction with the James Webb Space Telescope, NASAs next large space telescope, which well be launching next year.

Joe Bird: All right, doctor. Thanks so much for your time this morning. We greatly appreciate it. I wish I could meet you and come join you for a board game over your shoulder and just talk a little more about Hubble. We greatly appreciate your time, today. Thank you so much.

Dr. Paul Hertz: My pleasure and everybody should check out nasa.gov/hubble for lots more information.

Joe Bird: All rightie.

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WATCH: Eyewitness News talks with NASA astrophysicist about Hubble Space Telescopes 30th Anniversary - Eyewitness News (WEHT/WTVW)

TwelveColumbia professors have been elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, joining some of the worlds most accomplished leaders from academia, business, public affairs, the humanities and the arts in one of the nations most prestigious honorary societies.

The members of the class of 2020 have excelled in laboratories and lecture halls, they have amazed on concert stages and in surgical suites, and they have led in board rooms and courtrooms, said Academy PresidentDavid W. Oxtoby. With todays election announcement, these new members are united by a place in history and by an opportunity to shape the future through the Academys work to advance the public good.

Elena Aprile is a physics professor whose research interests include high-energy nuclear and particle physics, astrophysics, gravitational waves and cosmology. She is the founderof the XENON Dark Matter Experiment, an underground research facility in Italy that engages in experiments aiming to detect dark matter particles.

Zainab Bahrani is the Edith Porada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology. Much of her work has focused on the role of the image in art, particularly in the ancient world. A former curator of ancient Near Eastern art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Professor Bahrani is director of the Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments project at Columbia, which locates and assesses the condition of monuments in Iraq and southern Turkey.

Pierre-Andr Chiappori is the E. Rowan and Barbara Steinschneider Professor of Economics. He specializes in contracts and organization, development economics, health and education, and microeconomics.

Brent Hayes Edwards is a professor of English and Comparative Literature. His 2017 book, Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination, won the 2018 ASCAP Foundation Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism as well as the 2019 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

Bernard Faure, the Kao Professor of Japanese Religion, is interested in various aspects of East Asian Buddhism, with an emphasis on Chan/Zen and Tantric or esoteric Buddhism.His work is influenced by anthropological history and cultural theory.

Andrew Gelman is the Higgins Professor of Statistics, Professor of Political Science and director of theApplied Statistics Center at Columbia. His research spans a wide range of topics, including why it is rational to vote, why campaign polls are so variable when elections are so predictable and why redistricting is good for democracy.

Michal Lipson is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor of AppliedPhysics, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.She pioneered critical building blocks in the field of silicon photonics, which today is recognized as one of the most promising directions for solving the major bottlenecks in microelectronics.

Colin P. Nuckolls is the Sheldon and Dorothea Buckler Professor of Chemistry. His research focuses on integrating reaction chemistry into electrical devices. He is a founding member of the Columbia University Nano Initiative.

Molly Przeworski is a professor in the department of biological sciences. Her work aims to understand how natural selection has shaped patterns of genetic variation, and to identify the causes and consequences of variation in recombination and mutation rates, in humans and other organisms.

Sarah Stillman directs the Global Migration Project at the Journalism School, which offers several reporting fellows the opportunity to pursue stories on gender and migration, focusing on U.S. immigration law, border politics, international refugee policy and more. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Sarah Sze is a professor in the visual arts programat the School of the Arts whose work has been exhibited in museums worldwide and spans sculpture, multimedia installations, collage and painting. She spent 2019 as the Alan Kanzer artist-in-residence at the Zuckerman Institute.

Mihalis Yannakakis is the Percy K. and Vida L.W. Hudson Professor of Computer Science. He works on the theoretical foundations of computing, seeking to understand the inherent computational complexity of problems and to design efficient algorithms for their solution.

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences Inducts 12 Columbia Faculty Members - Columbia University

April 28, 2020

On Monday, May 11,The College of Liberal Arts and Sciencesat Arizona State University will recognize its highest achieving students from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities at the 2020 virtual convocation ceremony.

Each department and school within The College has selected an outstanding student who has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to academic excellence during their time at ASU. These students will be awarded a prestigious Deans Medal in honor of their scholastic achievements.

Meet the outstanding spring 2020 Deans Medalist awardees from around The College.

Deans Medal:Department of EconomicsMajor:EconomicsMinor:Statistics

Mann is a student at Barrett, The Honors College at ASU, a New American University Scholar and a National Merit Scholar who is passionate about economics and statistics.

While at ASU, Mann researched projects including assisting in econometric research examining the effects of spatial and temporal disaggregation on the relationship between extreme weather and GDP in the United States.

I could not think of a more ideal recipient for this award than John, said Jose Mendez, chair of the awards committee for the Department of Economics. Not only is he outstanding academically, he is also truly remarkable as an individual. I have never had a student that was so respectful and gracious. I feel privileged having had him in my class.

During his college career, Mann worked at a number of places, including the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he provided research and analysis to inform reports, and at ASUs Office of University Initiatives, where he worked as a strategic research analyst.

Deans Medal:School of Civic and Economic Thought and LeadershipMajors:Civic and economic thought and leadership, political scienceMinors:Film and media production, Spanish

Throughout his time at ASU, Doebbeling stood out as a leader among his peers. As an early adopter of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Doebbeling was able to grow alongside a new program.

Doebbeling served as the secretary of ASU Young Democrats and is a member of ASU Students for Education Equity. Taking a substantial international approach to his education, Doebbeling participated in numerous Global Intensive Experiences including traveling to India, Israel and the West Bank, Trinidad, Spain and Cuba. His capstone project makes an interesting comparison between founding father George Washington and revolutionary founder Fidel Castro.

Cormac Doebbling possesses a rare combination of intellectual breadth and depth, said Paul Carrese, director and professor at the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. Whether it is international politics, grassroots political activism, political philosophy, film, theater or literature Cormac is enthusiastic and knowledgeable. It has been a pleasure having him as part of our schools founding generation of students.

After graduating from ASU, he plans on completing his masters degree in comedic writing at DePaul University in Chicago in order to pursue a career in political satire in television and film.

Deans Medal:School of Earth and Space ExplorationMajors:Earth and space exploration (astrophysics), physicsMinor:Mathematics

Through his endless dedication and determination, Bechtel exemplifies the interdisciplinary spirit and community engagement the School of Earth and Space Exploration thrives for. During his time at ASU, Bechtel, a New American University Scholar and ASU/NASA Space Grant Scholar, participated in several research projects (including both Barrett and senior thesis projects), mentored incoming students and volunteered in support of STEM education.

He has outperformed every other student in the class, including the graduate students by a substantial margin, said Judd Bowman, a professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration. He is a joy to have in class. While many students balk at working with raw untested data, Shane faced the challenge head on.

Bechtel wrote and contributed to many academic papers and gave several presentations on his research. For his senior thesis, Bechtel worked with research scientist Rolf Jansen to conduct an in-depth structural analysis of a small sample of intermediate redshift galaxies.

He approached this new topic of research with enthusiasm and more importantly produced tangible results in a very short period of time, while juggling his many other commitments, Jansen said. Moreover, he implemented his code in a general pipeline that will prove useful for related future research projects.

Deans Medal:School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious StudiesMajor:Philosophy (morality, politics and law)

Leland, a Barrett student, stands out for her outstanding hard work, compelling and clear writing ability and her helpful class participation.

Her honors thesis explores disability from a personal perspective and aims to dramatically shift the way we think about disabilities while recognizing that the stigmatization of disabilities affects other marginalized identities. Leland alsostudied abroad in Greece and Italy, and served as a study abroad diversity panelist.

Shawn E. Klein, philosophy faculty at the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, said Leland is the kind of student who goes above and beyond to help her peers come to better understand content.

What distinguishes Morgan is that she is an educator, that she is committed to the potential of higher education for producing broader social changes, and that she is personally devoted to changing the content of, social relations in, and standard operating procedure of academia, Klein said.

Deans Medal:Hugh Downs School of Human CommunicationMajors:Communication, political scienceCertificates:Cross-sector leadership, political entrepreneurship through internships: local to global and international studies

Throughout Hinshaws time at ASU, she has engaged in a wide variety of opportunities, including 11 different internships across the public, private and nonprofit sectors.

Hinshaw is a Barrett student and two-time Hugh Downs School of Human Communication Scholar. She also served as the 201819 Barrett Honors Fellow, working with Keith Brown, director and professor at the Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies.

It has been a great experience to be part of her ASU journey, and an inspiration to observe her clarity of purpose, her organizational skills and her poise and professionalism, Brown said. Besides her innovative and meticulous thesis work on the impact of Tempe Sister Cities youth exchange program, she also personified ASU's commitment to community engagement."

Hinshaw explored her interest in intercultural communication and international affairs while studying abroad in Ghana, Israel and the West Bank as well as nationally in Washington, D.C., with the McCain Institutes Policy Design Program.

In addition to internships, Hinshaw works as the communications coordinator for ASU Project Humanities and also served in leadership roles for the Next Generation Service Corps, the Global Leadership Development Program and the advisory board of ASU Global Guides.

Deans Medal:School of International Letters and CulturesMajor:Russian

Philipson is an outstanding student, employee and volunteer with an extraordinary talent for languages including Russian, English and Latin. She has a passion for foreign affairs, which she is using to make a difference in the world through public, government service.

With an impeccable knowledge of Russian grammar, Philipson is an outstanding student who always understands what she is reading and is prepared to discuss her ideas, said Hilde Hoogenboom, an associate professor in the School of International Letters and Cultures.

Philipson is a semifinalist for the U.S. State Departments highly competitive Critical Languages scholarship for advanced Russian study in Russia and is one of the first students from ASU who was offered a prestigious summer internship as a Russian Language Analyst with the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

In the fall she will attend the University of Oxford to pursue her masters degree in Russian and East European studies. Afterwards she plans on attending law school and hopes to work in the Department of Homeland Security to fight against human trafficking.

Deans Medal:Department of PhysicsMajor:Physics

Johnson is an accomplished student interested in applying physics to real-world problems, specifically when it comes to renewable energy. She is the co-author of three published papers and an award-winning presenter who has received the NASA Space Grant consecutively for the past few years.

Anna Zaniewski, an associate instructional professional in the Department of Physics, said Johnsons outstanding productivity, skills and maturity were exemplified in her work.

Holly demonstrates an ability to learn quickly, think independently and collaborate well. Her technical skills are impressive Zaniewski said. She learns each new technique quickly and carefully. She takes detailed notes and is trusted with our most essential samples and research projects.

In addition to her research, Johnson regularly volunteers and contributes to the development of other students through her position as a mentor in ASUs Sundial Project. Johnson has been accepted into several prestigious graduate programs including Princeton.

Deans Medal:School of Transborder StudiesMajor:Transborder Chicana/o & Latina/o studies (U.S. and Mexican regional immigration policy and economy)Certificate:Cross-sector leadership

Austin is known for her diligence, persistence, community outreach, involvement and educational excellence. Through her life experiences in between high school and college, Austin realized that she wanted to dedicate her life to public service and building a better community.

Austin served as the transfer chair for the Next Generation Service Corps scholarship where she connected and assisted potential transfer students by providing them with resources. As a transfer student herself, she was able to provide helpful insights that have helped many students succeed in transitioning to the university.

Throughout her time at ASU, Austin successfully balanced schoolwork, community service and leadership roles while simultaneously working two to three jobs. Austin has also been a strong ambassador for the School of Transborder Studies by representing the unit in The College Welcome Assembly and being recognized as a Student Leader in The College.

Lorena is vividly passionate about her current studies and future career in law. In the classroom, she is fully engaged and contributes to the learning of every student, said Irasema Coronado, director and professor at the School of Transborder Studies.

Deans Medal:School of Social TransformationMajors:Justice studies, politics and the economyCertificate:Socio-legal studies

Saunders, a Barrett student, has actively shown her commitment to social innovation and fostering a more inclusive and just society by participating in campus residence life and leadership positions in political advocacy and nonprofit organizations.

In her honors thesis, Saunders drew from her own experience as a walking paraplegic and aimed to expand access for ASU students with physical disabilities. By conducting an extensive inventory of nearly all buildings on the Tempe campus, she identified physical accessibility issues across campus.

Mackenzie is a pathbreaker who rises above the small-mindedness of individuals and the restrictions of society, said Annamaria Oliverio, a lecturer in the School of Social Transformation. She elegantly transforms challenges into opportunities, not just for herself, but also others.

Saunders works as a deputy campaign manager for the November 2020 and March 2021 elections for the Phoenix City Council and as Director of Operations for a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for disability rights.

Through an early decision, two-year deferral program that encourages students to gain professional experience before law school, Saunders wasaccepted to Harvard Law School. After earning her law degree she aspires to work in disability rights law to strengthen the ADA and eventually become a federal judge.

Deans Medal:T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family DynamicsMajor:Family and human developmentMinor:Sociology

Since her freshman year, Berendzen demonstrated a high level of involvement in research, teaching, optional advanced coursework and leadership roles.

She pursued advanced statistical methods courses, served as a research assistant on six research projects and worked as a grader or teachers assistant for four different courses. Through this work, she has a first-author manuscript in progress and presented at the National Conference on Family Relations.

Clearly, Hannah is a highly accomplished student. More importantly, however, interacting with her is a pleasure, said Stacie Foster, director of undergraduate programs at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics. She is kind, compassionate towards others, and incredibly hard-working.

Following graduation Berendzen plans to continue her education in family and human development by pursuing her PhD at ASU.

Deans Medal:Department of PsychologyMajor:PsychologyMinor:Statistics

Smola is a first-generation college student whose early experiences inspired her to pursue a psychology degree at ASU with a focus on success and well-being of students and adolescents from underrepresented backgrounds.

Xochitl Arlene Smola is an exemplary student who has overcome adversity and taken advantage of everything that ASU has to offer, the Department of Psychology awards committee said in their nomination letter. She represents us all well and is truly worthy of the Dean's Medal.

She worked for multiple research programs including as a field manager for the Bridges Project at the REACH Institute during her freshman year, where she interviewed parents and adolescents, oversaw program interventions and supervised the field work of 30 of her peers. During her junior year, she worked in the Adolescent Stress and Emotion Lab, where she studied the Latino transition to college. Smola also represented ASUs Department of Psychology in summer research training programs at the University of California, Los Angeles and University of Minnesota.

Following graduation, Smola will attend graduate school for developmental psychology at one of the five programs that she was accepted into. She aspires to be a research professor in developmental psychology.

Deans Medal:School of Life SciencesMajor:Biological sciences (biology and society)Minors:Spanish, civic and economic thought and leadershipCertificate:History and philosophy of science

In her time at ASU, Buckerexplored a diverse span of activitiesand engaged in a variety of leadership positions, often forming connections and establishing partnerships across departments and academic disciplines at ASU and on a global level. Bucker, an ASU Tillman Scholar, successfully channeled her passion for community development, educational access and science communication with her skills in design-based research and curriculum-building.

Bucker co-founded the community initiative, INvision, which seeks to excite low-opportunity background youth about higher education through partnering ASUs diverse learning opportunities with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona.

She studied abroad in the rural village of Tilonia, Rajasthan, India, where she developed an understanding of mental health in the rural context through participant observation, interviews and community engagement.

In addition to her academic and research work, Bucker participated in athletic endeavors on the womens triathlon team swimming, biking and running her way to two consecutive NCAA National Championships.

Deans Medal:School of Mathematical and Statistical SciencesMajors:Mathematics, physicsCertificate:Cryptology

Burgueno is a first-generation college student who is known for her creative, self-driven and collaborative nature. She performed several research projects on MRI imaging and on applications of p-adic number theory to quantum physics.

In her honors thesis Burgueno continued her research on applications of p-adic number theory to quantum physics. Her research has been published and presented at conferences. In her work, Burgueno also initiated collaboration with researchers in Europe

Burgueno served as an officer of the schools flagship program, Association of Women in Mathematics, various extracurricular activities as a tutor and a contributor to an online physics program for high school students.

Upon graduation she plans on continuing her studies and pursuing a PhD in mathematics modern particle physics.

Deans Medal:Department of EnglishMajors:English (literature), French, political scienceMinor:Asian languages (Chinese)Certificate:International studies

McCrearys diverse set of interests pushed him to take on three majors, a minor and a certificate while working as a teaching assistant at Barrett and a research assistant and French tutor.

During his time at ASU, McCreary participated in both the International Chinese Language Program and the French Language and Culture in Lyon programs. He is the founder and president of ASU Cultural Attachs, hosting weekly meetings where American and international students practice languages and learn about other cultures. In addition, he serves as a chief ambassador of ASU Global Council of Diplomats and as the membership chair of ASU United Nations Association.

As a student, Micah was prepared, attentive, respectful and participated regularly and thoughtfully, said Stephanie R. deLus, principal honors faculty fellow at Barrett. His willingness to learn and inquiring mind served him well as he built on his strong foundation to become even more excellent as time unfolded.

McCreary studied abroad several times, traveling to China and Taiwan to immerse himself in his study of the languages. McCreary was accepted to many prestigious law programs and will pursue his graduate degree at Harvard Law School in fall 2020.

Deans Medal:School of Molecular SciencesMajor:ChemistryMinors:Materials science and engineering, mathematics

Howell has been extensively involved in undergraduate research at ASU in the interfaces of materials chemistry and health and co-authored several peer-reviewed, published papers. Her accomplishments have been recognized with the Goldwater Scholarship, the highest recognition for undergraduate research in science in the nation.

Howell excelled in her coursework and her research, receiving the ACS Divisions of Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry awards from the School of Molecular Sciences.

It is remarkable for a student to earn one of these awards, and almost unheard of for a student to earn two, the school of Molecular Sciences awards committee said in their nomination letter.It is a testament to Ms. Howells success and its recognition broadly by SMS faculty. In short, Ms. Howell is a standout who makes an impression on those who interact with her.

Following graduation, Howell plans topursue a PhDin physical chemistry at Harvard University. Her long-term career goal is to become tenure-track faculty at a large research university.

Deans Medal:School of Geographical Sciences and Urban PlanningMajor:GeographyMinors:Sustainability, urban planning

Berry is atop-performing graduating seniorin the geography, urban planning and sustainability programs, making the Deans list every semester. She has balanced her studies while juggling many duties in her position as a student retention assistant.

Faculty in the school speak glowingly about Berry, noting her exemplary performance in class and her outstanding projects including her study of agricultural land loss in the U.S. using GIS and statistics.

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The College honors outstanding academic achievement with 2020 Dean's Medals - ASU Now