by Justin Vasel | Mar 6, 2013 | Current Events
The Sequester is a major blow to scientific research and development in the United States. In this piece I discuss the long-term implications of such a reduction in scientific output and how the Sequester affects space-related research.
by Justin Vasel | Dec 5, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
Weighing in at 17 billion solar masses, NGC 1277 contains the largest black hole discovered to date. What makes this black hole exceptional it not just its size, but also that it does not seem to follow the relationship between most supermassive black holes and their host galaxies known as the M-sigma relation. The author’s discuss their findings and possible implications.
by Justin Vasel | Sep 17, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
Paper Title: Disruption of a Proto-Planetary Disk by the Black Hole at the Milky Way Centre Authors: Murray-Clay, R. A. and Loeb, A. Institution: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)If our solar system lives in suburbia, the center of our galaxy is a sprawling metropolis shining bright for all to see. The center of our Milky Way Galaxy is a crowded, bustling and hectic place. Stars race around like cars on a freeway. Densely-packed hot stars and supernova explosions flood the region with deadly radiation. The supermassive black hole at the center destroys anything that dares to wander too close and test its strength. The galactic center is different than what we’re used to. It’s exciting. It’s dangerous. It’s the kind of place that’s fun to visit, but you wouldn’t want to raise your kids there. The traditional wisdom among astronomers is that stars feel the same way; There is just too much excitement going on in the galactic center for planets to form around stars…Or is there?Last year, a team of astronomers at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile discovered a cloud of gas falling towards the black hole at the center, Sagittarius-A* (SgrA*). The team hypothesized that the gas cloud was the result of a collision between two gas clouds streaming from nearby stars. New research from the CfA proposes the seemingly-unlikely explanation the gas cloud is a proto-planetary disk surrounding a star that is too faint to see. A proto-planetary disk is a cloud of gas and dust that orbits a star for millions of years while it slowly coalesces into planets and asteroids and comets; It is where...
by Justin Vasel | Aug 17, 2012 | Current Events
Last week NASA successfully landed a car-sized rover on the planet Mars, 150 million miles away from Earth. If that weren’t impressive enough, they managed to land it with an error of less than 2 miles. This was no doubt the culmination of creative cleverness, remarkable engineering, and good ol’ fashioned, unwavering ambition. But there is another contributor that seldom gets the recognition it deserves: The policymakers in Washington D.C., and more indirectly, the citizens of the United States.In the maelstrom that is the current global economy, and during a time when national debts and deficits are ominously baring their teeth, we the public have decided that a mission to Mars is still important. Even with a price tag of $2.5 billion, we’re happy to bite the bullet and send that spacecraft on a one-way suicide mission for science. We know that it has value, that science advances technology, that grandiose projects like this inspire people to aim higher than ever before, that exploration and discovery are worthy of our attention and our investment.The tenets of discovery manifest themselves in projects like Curiosity, but they are born in policy. Public policy plays an important role in science these days. In July of last year, the appropriations committee in the United State House of Representatives planned to cut funding to the James Webb Space Telescope–Hubble’s successor. Many of you reading probably remember when this happened; it was very jarring for astronomers everywhere. There was substantial backlash from the international astronomical community and eventually, it was kept in the budget–for now. Not all projects are so lucky, though. The Laser Interferometer Space...
by Justin Vasel | Aug 10, 2012 | Daily Paper Summaries
If there was a cosmic play with the universe as its stage and the celestial bodies as its actors, undoubtedly there would be one character more notorious than the rest; a villain feared by all: the infamous Black Hole. They are truly the things of nightmares, and for one little star out there, that nightmare came true.
