August 5, 2017 TESS spacecraft awaits installation of cameras and other instruments. Credit: Orbital ATK

A NASA mission designed to explore the stars in search of planets outside of our solar system is a step closer to launch, now that its four cameras have been completed by researchers at MIT.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), due to launch in 2018, will travel through space, identifying more than 20,000 extrasolar planets. These will range from Earth-sized planets to much larger gas giants. TESS is expected to catalog a sample of around 500 Earth-sized and "super Earth" planets, or those with radii less than twice that of Earth. It will detect small rock-and-ice planets orbiting a diverse range of stars, including rocky worlds in the habitable zones of their host stars.

"The scientific community is eagerly awaiting the launch of TESS and the first data release in 2018," says Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences at MIT and deputy lead of the TESS Science Office.

During its two-year mission, TESS, which is being led by MIT and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, will monitor the brightness of more than 200,000 stars. It will search for temporary drops in brightness caused by an exoplanet passing in front of its host star, as viewed from Earth.

The satellite's four cameras, developed by researchers at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, are equipped with large-aperture wide-angle lenses designed to survey the entire sky.

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Each camera consists of a lens assembly containing seven optical elements and a detector with four charge-coupled device (CCD) sensor chips. The overall process of designing, fabricating, and testing the cameras at MIT has taken four years to complete.

The cameras were recently delivered to Dulles, Virginia-based aerospace company Orbital ATK, where they will be integrated onto the satellite. The four cameras have been mounted onto the camera plate, and successful operation with the flight computer has been demonstrated.

The instruments have just been inspected by NASA and a group of independent technical experts, as part of a formal Systems Integration Review of all TESS components, which they passed successfully.

Each of the four cameras has a field of view that is more than five times greater than that of the camera flown on the earlier planet-hunting Kepler space observatory mission, according to TESS Principal Investigator George Ricker, senior research scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute.

"The TESS four-camera ensemble instantaneously views a section of sky that is more than 20 times greater than that for the Kepler mission," Ricker says. "The instantaneous field of view of the TESS cameras, combined with their area and detector sensitivity, is unprecedented in a space mission."

A complication found in very fast wide-angle lenses, such as those in the TESS cameras, is that the image sharpness varies over the field of view, and there is no single focus, as found in more conventional cameras. Furthermore, the imaging properties change as the temperature of the cameras changes.

The MIT TESS team has subjected the cameras to extended, rigorous testing in conditions designed to replicate the environment they will be subjected to in space. These tests demonstrate that the cameras perform as expected, but with a small shift in focus relative to that predicted by models. This shift results in simulated stellar images in the center of the field appearing sharper than expected, while images at the edges of the field are somewhat less sharp. However, after independently studying the effects of this shift, researchers on the MIT TESS team and at NASA both concluded that the mission will readily achieve all of its scientific goals.

TESS relies on its ability to sense minute changes in stellar brightness to detect planets passing across them. The data processing is designed to correct for the variations in image sharpness over the field for most of the stars, and it will produce a record of brightness over time for every star being monitored, according to Jacqueline Hewitt, director of the MIT Kavli Institute.

The MIT TESS team will continue to carry out long-term ground tests on a spare flight camera to ensure that their in-orbit performance is well understood.

Following its launch next year, TESS will divide the sky into 26 "stitched" sections and will point its cameras at each of these in turn for 27 days. It will explore the Southern Hemisphere in the first year of its mission, and the Northern Hemisphere in its second year.

"TESS is classed by NASA as an Explorer mission with very focused scientific goals," Hewitt says. "It was designed to find exoplanets that are nearby and orbiting bright stars, so we can study them in great detail."

The data produced by the cameras will first be processed by the spacecraft's on-board computer. They will then be transmitted to Earth every two weeks via the NASA Deep Space Network and immediately forwarded to the TESS Payload Operations Center at MIT.

Explore further: TESS mission cleared for next development phase

Provided by: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NASA has officially confirmed the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, clearing it to move forward into the development phase. This marks a significant step for the TESS mission, which would search the entire ...

NASA's search for planets outside of our solar system has mostly involved very distant, faint stars. NASA's upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), by contrast, will look at the brightest stars in our solar ...

As the search for life on distant planets heats up, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is bringing this hunt closer to home. Launching in 2017-2018, TESS will identify planets orbiting the brightest stars ...

NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission to fly in 2017. TESS will follow in the footsteps of NASA's pioneering Kepler Mission, continuing the groundbreaking ...

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), planned to be launched in August 2017 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, is designed to discover thousands of exoplanets. Led ...

Set to launch in 2017, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will monitor more than half a million stars over its two-year mission, with a focus on the smallest, brightest stellar objects.

A NASA mission designed to explore the stars in search of planets outside of our solar system is a step closer to launch, now that its four cameras have been completed by researchers at MIT.

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Spectacular sunsets and sunrises are enough to dazzle most of us, but to astronomers, dusk and dawn are a waste of good observing time. They want a truly dark sky.

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According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System's formation was triggered by a shock wave from an exploding supernova. The shock wave injected material from the exploding star into a neighboring cloud of dust and gas, ...

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TESS mission to discover new planets moves toward launch - Phys.Org

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Few problems are more computationally intense than magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations for astrophysics. Even with the best algorithms and hardware, some calculations can take weeks to complete.

Simulations mathematical modeling is used to discover the evolutionary processes that created and continue to shape the universe. Clearly, performing experiments in the laboratory here on Earth are just not possible. But simulating these complex cosmic processes at high resolution is possible and requires the most powerful supercomputers.

At Novosibirsk State University (NSU), a major research and education center in Siberia, astrophysicists needed to optimize performance of the AstroPhi project codes they were developing for Intel Xeon PhiTM processor-based hardware. This valuable project helps students learn to create numerical simulation codes for massively parallel supercomputers.

A key aspect of the AstroPhi project was optimizing the code for maximum performance on the Intel Xeon Phi processors. Before optimization, the team had difficulty identifying vector dependencies and choosing the best vector sizes. The goals for optimizing the code were to remove vector dependencies that inhibited optimization and to optimize memory load operations by efficiently adapting vector and array sizes for the Intel Xeon Phi architecture. To help achieve these goals, the team turned to Intel Advisor and Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector, tools that are part of Intel Parallel Studio XE.

The NSU team co-designed a new solver for massively parallel architectures based on Intel Xeon Phi processors. They based the solver on Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel AVX-512) instructions. These instructions deliver 512-bit SIMD support and enable programs to pack eight double-precision or 16 single-precision floating-point numbers, or eight 64-bit integers, or 16 32-bit integers within the 512-bit vectors. This enables processing twice the number of data elements that AVX/AVX2 can process with a single instruction, and 4X that of SSE.

On todays processors, it is crucial to both vectorize (using AVX* or SIMD* instructions) and parallelize software to realize the full performance potential of the processor. Using Intel Advisor, part of Intel Parallel Studio XE, the team was able to perform a roofline analysis to highlight poor-performing loops and show performance headroom for each loop, identifying which can be improved and which are worth improving.

The team reported that Intel Advisor made it easier to identify bottlenecks and determine the best optimization strategies by forecasting performance gains in various scenarios, greatly eliminating wasted implementation time. Intel Advisor provided the project team tips for effective vectorization along with key data like trip counts, data dependencies, and memory access patterns, to make vectorization safe and efficient.

Also, using the graphical Intel Trace Analyzer and Collector increased the teams understanding of the applications MPI communication behavior across nodes. Here too they were quickly able to find bottlenecks, improve correctness, and maximize the applications performance on Intel architecture. MPI communications profiling and analysis features helped to improve application scaling.

By optimizing their applications with tools from Intel Parallel Studio XE, and running on the latest Intel hardware, the NSU team achieved a performance speed-up of 3X, cutting the standard time for calculating one problem from one week to just two days.

Intel Parallel Studio XE is a comprehensive software development suite of compilers and tools that gives developers the ability to maximize application performance on todays and future processors by taking advantage of the ever-increasing processor core count and vector register width.

Download your free 30-day trial of Intel Parallel Studio XE

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3X Performance Boost Using Intel Advisor and Intel Trace Analyzer in Astrophysics Simulations - insideHPC

Penn: Office of University Communications

Penn Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe Penn: Office of University Communications ... of the universe is accelerating, which wouldn't happen in a 'normal' universe, said Gary Bernstein, Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and Project Scientist ... Survey Provides High-Precision Measurements of Universe's MakeupLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Our clumpy cosmos | symmetry magazineSymmetry magazine Dark Energy Survey: Most Accurate Map of Recent Universe Unveiled by ScientistsNewsweek The Daily Galaxy (blog) -Engadget -Tech Times all 35 news articles »

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Penn Astronomers Contribute to the Most Accurate Measurement of Dark Matter Structure in the Universe - Penn: Office of University Communications

Christian D. Ott, a tenured professor of theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, has resigned in the wake of an investigation that found he had harassed two students.

From BuzzFeed:

"This has been a difficult situation for our community," the Caltech statement said. Caltech declined to provide any further comment to BuzzFeed News, and Ott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to more than 1,000 pages of emails and chat messages submitted to the investigators, first publicly reported by BuzzFeed News, Ott had become infatuated with Kleiser, whom he then fired due to his feelings. He later confessed his actions in increasingly inappropriate and erratic emotional exchanges with Gossan.

Gossan filed a complaint with the university's Title IX office in the spring of 2015, which Kleiser joined soon after. Prior to Gossan's complaint, Kleiser had no idea she had been fired for reasons unrelated to her scientific work.

Kleiser is relieved that Ott resigned. But her experience with him, as well as the "lukewarm" response from many in the faculty to news of the problem, has led her to decide to leave academia once her PhD is complete.

"I didnt see a lot of action on the part of people that I considered to be my role models in my field," Kleiser said. "So thats kind of difficult, and I think that makes it harder to want to stay and eventually take a permanent position in a place like this."

In 112 recent cases of stalking and harassment reviewed by UK police watchdogs, not a single one was dealt with properly, reports the BBC. The report, Living in Fear, found that victims of harassment and stalking were widely disregard and left at risk, and often told that the harassment they received was their own fault. []

In the New York Times, Katie Bienner relates a cultural shift in Silicon Valley: women victims of sexual harassment describing their experiences frankly. In an industry bound by delusions of meritocracy and egality, simply talking about it is radical. More than two dozen women in the technology start-up industry spoke to The Times in recent []

A Connecticut man who screamed You will never ever, ever, stop me, my Christianity, thumped his chest, and menaced an Arab family on a Texas beach, was charged with public intoxication earlier this week, reports Fox News. This man verbally attacked an Arab family and yelled Donald Trump will stop you pic.twitter.com/m8vrV3RS3S NowThis (@nowthisnews) May []

Web technology has matured considerably in the last decade, and developers are continually in demand. If youre looking to add some skills to your resume, or are just interested in exploring the possibilities of the web, check out this Interactive Web Developer Bootcamp.In this course, youll get a comprehensive overview of full-stack development using modern []

Even if you only use your PC for web browsing, media playback, or light document creation, default software can sometimes come up short. To give your Windows PC a bit of a boost, weve compiled a variety of helpful, paid apps that can enhance your user experience and make you more productive.In thePremium PC Power []

Many people find it easiest to learn things by doing them. If youre looking to give a doer in your life an interesting, hands-on project, check out these tech-focused DIY kits:DIY AT-AT Cable Organizer & Card Case ($32.99)With this kit, you get to put together a wooden replica of an AT-AT that keeps cables, pens, []

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Caltech astrophysics professor who harassed women has resigned - Boing Boing

YAKIMA, Wash. -- Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered about the stars, planets and galaxies but have no time to read up on it? Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson can help with that.

What exactly is astrophysics? Its the branch of astronomy concerned with the physical nature of stars and other celestial bodies. The book offers small chapters of easily consumable information about our universe.

Tyson is a well-known astrophysicist, author and general science communicator. I was excited when I saw he had a new book out. I have had a busy summer, but his book is especially designed for people with a full schedule, making it a quick, fun read.

He begins with the Big Bang and the formation of the universe. Tyson moves on to some intriguing facts about the universe while also briefly explaining the history of physics itself. Some topics he touches on are the cosmic background, what it is and why its so important to studying the universe.

He writes about how exciting and weird the space between galaxies can be, containing million-degree X-ray emitting gas, dark matter, faint blue galaxies ... super-duper high-energy charged particles and the mysterious quantum vacuum energy.

The author also includes chapters on dark matter and dark energy, and why they are so interesting. And he explains why the planet Uranus has moons named after characters in Shakespearean plays.

Tyson does an excellent job of taking broad, often confusing topics and making them easily understandable and engaging. His writing, while witty and delightful, is likewise beautiful and thought-provoking.

Heres an example. When I track the orbits of asteroids, comets and planets, each one a pirouetting dancer in a cosmic ballet, choreographed by the forces of gravity, sometimes I forget that too many people act in wanton disregard for the delicate interplay of Earths atmosphere, oceans and land, with consequences that our children and our childrens children will witness and pay for with their health and well-being.

I really enjoyed this book, picking it up whenever I had a spare moment, transporting me to the wonders and mysteries of our universe. I would highly recommend this as a gift for teens and adults interested in space or science. I believe it is also a wonderful place to begin if youre just starting to ponder the universe yourself.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson was published in May by W.W. Norton & Co. It retails for $18.95.

Rachel Fowler works for Inklings Bookshop. She and other Inklings staffers review books in this space every week.

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Book Scene: Pondering the universe ... quickly - Yakima Herald-Republic

This artists impression of SN 2017egm shows the power source for this extraordinarily bright supernova. The explosion was triggered by a massive star that collapsed to form a neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field and rapid spin, called a magnetar. Debris from the supernova explosion is shown in blue and the magnetar is shown in red. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA

Many rock stars dont like to play by the rules, and a cosmic one is no exception. A team of astronomers has discovered that an extraordinarily bright supernova occurred in a surprising location. This heavy metal supernova discovery challenges current ideas of how and where such super-charged supernovas occur.

Supernovas are some of the most energetic events in the Universe. When a massive star runs out of fuel, it can collapse onto itself and create a spectacular explosion that briefly outshines an entire galaxy, dispersing vital elements into space.

In the past decade, astronomers have discovered about fifty supernovas, out of the thousands known, that are particularly powerful. These explosions are up to 100 times brighter than other supernovas caused by the collapse of a massive star.

Following the recent discovery of one of these superluminous supernovas, a team of astronomers led by Matt Nicholl from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., has uncovered vital clues about where some of these extraordinary objects come from.

Cambridge Universitys Gaia Science Alerts team discovered this supernova, dubbed SN 2017egm, on May 23, 2017 with the European Space Agencys Gaia satellite. A team led by Subo Dong of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University used the Nordic Optical Telescope to identify it as a superluminous supernova.

SN 2017egm is located in a spiral galaxy about 420 million light years from Earth, making it about three times closer than any other superluminous supernova previously seen. Dong realized that the galaxy was very surprising, as virtually all known superluminous supernovas have been found in dwarf galaxies that are much smaller than spiral galaxies like the Milky Way.

Building on this discovery, the CfA team found that SN 2017egms host galaxy has a high concentration of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which astronomers call metals. This is the first clear evidence for a metal-rich birthplace for a superluminous supernova. The dwarf galaxies that usually host superluminous supernovas are known to have a low metal content, which was thought to be an essential ingredient for making these explosions.

Superluminous supernovas were already the rock stars of the supernova world, said Nicholl. We now know that some of them like heavy metal, so to speak, and explode in galaxies like our own Milky Way.

If one of these went off in our own Galaxy, it would be much brighter than any supernova in recorded human history and would be as bright as the full Moon, said co-author Edo Berger, also of the CfA. However, theyre so rare that we probably have to wait several million years to see one.

The CfA researchers also found more clues about the nature of SN 2017egm. In particular, their new study supports the idea that a rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star, called a magnetar, is likely the engine that drives the incredible amount of light generated by these supernovas.

While the brightness of SN 2017egm and the properties of the magnetar that powers it overlap with those of other superluminous supernovas, the amount of mass ejected by SN 2017egm may be lower than the average event. This difference may indicate that the massive star that led to SN 2017egm lost more mass than most superluminous supernova progenitors before exploding. The spin rate of the magnetar may also be slower than average.

These results show that the amount of metals has at most only a small effect on the properties of a superluminous supernova and the engine driving it. However, the metal-rich variety occurs at only about 10% of the rate of the metal-poor ones. Similar results have been found for bursts of gamma rays associated with the explosion of massive stars. This suggests a close association between these two types of objects.

From July 4th, 2017 until September 16th, 2017 the supernova is not observable because it is too close to the Sun. After that, detailed studies should be possible for at least a few more years.

This should break all records for how long a superluminous supernova can be followed, said co-author Raffaella Margutti of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Im excited to see what other surprises this object has in store for us.

The CfA team observed SN 2017egm on June 18th with the 60-inch telescope at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatorys Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona.

A paper by Matt Nicholl describing these results was recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, and is available online. In addition to Berger and Margutti, the co-authors of the paper are Peter Blanchard, James Guillochon, and Joel Leja, all of the CfA, and Ryan Chornock of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

A copy of the paper isavailable online.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

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Astronomers discover 'heavy metal' supernova rocking out - Astronomy Now Online

Kozhikode: Applications have been invited from highly motivated students for the award of research scholarship to do a Ph.D. at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, an Autonomous Institution of the University Grants Commission or at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR), Pune, a centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune Campus.

The selection for the research scholarship will be through IUCAA-NCRA Admission Test (INAT) 2017, a written test at IUCAA, on December 7, 2017 (Thursday) and two interviews on December 7 and/ or 8, 2017 (Thursday and Friday), at NCRA-TIFR, Pune.

Eligibility: Students in any branch of B.E., B.Tech., M.E. or M.Tech degrees, or in the Physics, Electronics, Astronomy or Applied Mathematics branches of the B.Sc. or M.Sc. degrees, are eligible to apply for INAT-2017.

Those expecting to complete their M.Sc./Integrated M.Sc./M.E./M.Tech degrees by July 2018 with a minimum of 55% marks will be eligible for selection to the Ph.D. programme of both IUCAA and NCRA-TIFR. Those who complete their B.E./B.Tech degrees by July 2018 are eligible for selection to the Ph.D. programme at IUCAA and to the Integrated Ph.D. programme at NCRA-TIFR.

Students who complete their B.Sc. degrees by July 2018 will be eligible for selection to the Integrated Ph.D. programme at NCRA-TIFR and for pre-selection to the Ph.D. programme at IUCAA. In addition, talented final-year B.Sc., 1st year M.Sc., 3rd/4th year Integrated M.Sc. and 2nd/3rd year B.E./B.Tech students may also apply to be pre-selected for the Ph.D. programme at IUCAA.

Those who have already completed any of the above degrees are also eligible.

Applicants should have consistently good academic record. Students from engineering backgrounds are strongly encouraged to apply for INAT-2017. Applicant should be interested in carrying out doctoral research in Physics or Astronomy and Astrophysics and should have a good understanding of basic Physics.

Written Test: The Written Test will be of 2 hours duration. The question paper will have two parts, A and B with Part A containing 20 objective-type questions on basic Mathematics, Physics and Electronics. Part B will also have 20 objective-type questions from advanced Physics, Mathematics and Electronics/Engineering. For each question, candidates will have to identify and mark the correct answer from the given four answers. Each correct answer will carry 3 marks while for each wrong answer, one mark will be deducted.

Interview: Based on the performance in the written test, a limited number of candidates will be invited for two interviews, which will be conducted on December 7 and/or 8, 2017 by two different committees.

Final Selection: The final selection will be based on the scores in the written test and interviews.

Candidates selected by either IUCAA or NCRA-TIFR are expected to join in August 2018 (except for pre-selected candidates), after satisfactory completion of their qualifying examination.For both IUCAA and NCRA-TIFR, the selection through INAT is in addition to the selection through the Joint Entrance Screening Test (JEST).

Application: Applications can be submitted at the Apply Online link, at http://inat.ncra.tifr.res.in/INAT2017/. Applicant must first register by entering name and valid e-mail address in the appropriate registration boxes at http://inat.ncra.tifr.res.in/INAT2017/candidate/ApplyOnline.ncra.

An application password will then be automatically sent to the candidate's e-mail address; the e-mail address and the password must be entered in order to fill out the Online Application Form. The Application Form also requires the names and e-mail addresses of two referees.

Online Application Form has to be submitted by September 15, 2017. When the form is submitted, the candidate will receive an e-mail containing his/her Online ID, an account password, and confirmation that s/he has applied for INAT-2017. E-mails will also be automatically sent to the two referees, requesting them to fill and submit the online Confidential Assessment Form. The candidates should inform their referees about the Assessment Form. The last date for the online submission of the Assessment forms is September 20, 2017.

Each applicant must submit his/her Application Form before the referee fills the Assessment Form. Applicants may send e-mail to the Co-ordinator at inat@ncra.tifr.res.in in case of any problems with the online forms.

Based on the applications and referee assessments, applicants will be short-listed and invited to take the written test, to be held in Pune on December 7, 2017 (Thursday). All candidates who are invited to take the IUCAA-NCRA Admission Test should bring the Admit Letter with them. For the written test, the candidates should bring a pen, a pencil (HB), an eraser, and a simple mathematical calculator.

Those with more than 55% in the qualifying examination may walk-in for the written test by producing valid photo identification and bringing a copy of his/her most recent mark sheet. They should report at the Chandrasekhar Auditorium, IUCAA by 9 a.m for verification of these documents, to ensure that there are no logistical problems.

Based on the marks in the written test candidates will be shortlisted and invited to attend two interviews, by two different committees. Candidates have to bring all original mark sheets (starting from Class X) and any other relevant certificates when attending the interviews.

All outstation candidates who are invited to take the test will be paid travel support as per the prevailing rules. Outstation candidates will be paid one and one-third times the train/bus fare by second-class sleeper from their place of residence, as given in the INAT-2017 Application Form, to Pune and back by the shortest route, as well as a halting allowance, as per the prevailing rules, for each day of stay for the interviews. In the case of walk-in candidates, travel support will be paid as per rules only to those candidates who qualify for the interviews.

The final selection will be based on a combination of the marks obtained in the written test and the interviews.

Limited accommodation, restricted to candidates who will appear for the written Admission Test, may be available on the IUCAA and NCRA-TIFR campuses at a nominal charge. Those who wish to avail of this accommodation should send an e-mail request to the Coordinator, INAT-2017; at the e-mail address inat@ncra.tifr.res.in, before November 15, 2017.

Candidates should apply online at http://inat.ncra.tifr.res.in/inat. More details, including eligibility for selection to the different programmes at IUCAA and NCRA-TIFR as well as information for walk-in candidates, are available at the same URL.

Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) (An Autonomous Institution of the University Grants Commission) Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, S. P. Pune University Campus, Pune 411 007, India. Tel: +91 20 2560 4100 | Fax: +91 20 2560 4699 Website: http://www.iucaa.in.

National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Post Bag 3, Ganeshkhind, S. P. Pune University Campus, Pune 411 007, India. Tel: +91 20 2571 9000 | Fax: +91 20 2569 2149;Website: http://www.ncra.tifr.res.in ;http://inat.ncra.tifr.res.in/INAT2017/candidate/welcome.ncra

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Research at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics - Mathrubhumi English

Of all the mysteries in astrophysics, supernova explosions may seem to be the best-understood, at least to a lay person. A star runs out of fuel and goes boom.

But most of what we know is based on guesswork. My recent article on supernovas, Lucky Break Leads to Controversial Supernova Discovery, focused on the puzzles surrounding just one class of these objects so-called Type II core-collapse supernovas. But another common kind of supernova has recently been subject to scrutiny, and uncertainties over this type of supernova could affect our understanding of larger cosmic questions.

Until a few years ago, astronomers believed that all Type Ia supernovas are like fireworks built on the same assembly line, each one bursting with an identical brightness. Because of this, Type Ia supernovas were used as standard candles calibrated beacons that astronomers could use to deduce cosmic distances. Cosmologists used these supernovas to show that the universe is filled with mysterious stuff called dark energy a discovery that garnered the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics.

More recently, however, scientists have realized that the standard-candle model is flawed. Researchers have known since the 1990s that not all Type Ia supernovas reach the same brightness. Brighter ones appear to dim a little more slowly than fainter ones, so astrophysicists have been able to correct for the difference. But now researchers believe there is a strong relationship between the metallicity of a supernova (how many elements it contains that are heavier than helium) and its brightness. And metallicity is not easy to measure.

And while we know that a Type Ia supernova is a thermonuclear explosion that generates huge amounts of heavy elements such as iron, we still dont understand exactly what triggers it, although so-called white dwarf stars play a starring role. These objects are the cold, inert remnants of mid-mass stars such as our sun. A white dwarf star is exceptionally stable and would never explode on its own. But sometimes it will pull matter away from a nearby object, accreting mass until it hits a very precise milestone called the Chandrasekhar limit. At that point, the white dwarf can no longer support its own weight, and an explosion ensues. White dwarfs at the Chandrasekhar limit are thought to be more or less identical, which is why Type Ia supernovas were considered to be such great standard candles.

But what, astronomers wonder, is the nearby object that white dwarfs are pulling matter from? There is no consensus among astronomers what the progenitor system is for TypeIasupernovas, said Subo Dong, an astronomer at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University. According to Mark Sullivan, an astrophysicist at the University of Southampton, the companion star could be another white dwarf, or it could be something else, perhaps a main-sequence star a few times more massive than our sun. If its another white dwarf, the two might spiral inward and merge, which could significantly affect what happens. Studying the explosion mechanism and progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovas is a very active area of research nowadays, Dong said. I think we are at an exciting time of a paradigm shift in understanding thesupernovaexplosion.

Supernovas can explode in many varied and diverse ways that we are only just beginning to understand, Sullivan said. Even events that we thought we understood very well such as Type Ia supernovas turn out to have a surprising amount of variation.

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Cookie-Cutter Supernovas Might Come in Different Flavors - Quanta Magazine

As a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Bob Lindner used to develop artificial intelligence to better understand the stars, programming ways to analyze the data collected by massive telescopes.

Now, his startup VEDA Data applies those same mechanics to something smaller in scale: the directories of doctors found on health insurance websites.

VEDA Data uses machine learning in which computers are programmed to learn behaviors on their own to improve the accuracy of health care provider directories. According to Lindner, computers are great at parsing not just complex astronomical data, but complex health care data.

The same way of thinking is being applied, Lindner said. These data amounts are so huge.

Improving provider network accuracy has proven a mounting issue. According to a report released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services earlier this year, 45 percent of entries in the directories provided by insurers contracted with Medicare are inaccurate. There are incorrect addresses, wrong phone numbers, and even incorrect information about whether a doctor is actually within the network the group of providers that an insurer has decided to include in their plans.

Listing accurate information in whats essentially a provider phone book seems like it shouldnt be that hard. But its a problem that insurance companies have been struggling to solve, said the company's co-founder and CEO Meghan Gaffney Buck.

There are some really stupid billion-dollar problems, and this is one of them, she said.

Inaccurate directories are also a barrier to health care in the U.S. As a New York Times report from last year found, patients have accidentally sought care with out-of-network providers due to inaccurate directories, finding themselves slammed with unexpected bills.

Buck said the flawed directories can also result in people not getting care at all, especially those with lower incomes or who are older.

"You call, and (the directory) says they're accepting new patients and they're in network, and lo and behold they're not," she said. You might call three providers, and then give up. You just say, I'm not feeling well, but I give up.

Sometimes glitches or the sheer volume of data to trick can be an issue. Buck also suggested that health care providers have an incentive to provide confusing information a health system may list a physician as operating from multiple offices so as to more easily process claims, for example.

"There is actually profit motivation for health systems to list every doctor at every location in their system, she said.

In 2015, the Obama Administration enacted new rules and penalties for insurers offering inaccurate directories. VEDA Data markets to insurers looking to dodge fines and improve their listings.

The system that Lindner has constructed pulls data about providers from disparate sources ranging from the self-reported lists doctors give insurers to the publicly available National Provider Identifier database. Even Yelp reviews are included. The system picks out chunks of information a phone number, whether a provider is in the network, whether they're taking new patients and determines whether its accurate or not.

Humans grade the computer program on how its doing by fact-checking small portions of its work. The program then takes that feedback, learns from it, and becomes better at determining what's accurate.

The startup has forged a partnership with Humana. Lindner said that they're not quite at 100 percent accuracy, but have been able to improve the databases there to accuracy ranges of over 70 percent.

Its a complex task. But as Buck tells potential clients, its not exactly astrophysics.

"There's a lot more data in the galaxy than in this health record, so we're good," she said.

As for Lindner, he's happy with the change from astrophysics to health care. He was always more interested in the big data methodologies than the field itself.

"While the universe never ends in fascinating me ... sometimes I felt disconnected fromsociety on the Earth," he said. "It is refreshing and compelling to tackle problems that can affect the lives of millions of people for the better."

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Madison researcher goes from astrophysics to health care with new startup - Madison.com

July 27, 2017 An all-sky image of the Milky Way, as observed by the Planck Space Observatory in infrared. The data contained in this image were used in this research and were essential in calculating the distribution of the light energy of our galaxy. Credit: ESA / HFI / LFI consortia.

For the first time, a team of scientists have calculated the distribution of all light energy contained within the Milky Way, which will provide new insight into the make-up of our galaxy and how stars in spiral galaxies such as ours form. The study is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This research, conducted by astrophysicists at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), in collaboration with colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany and from the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy, also shows how the stellar photons, or stellar light, within the Milky Way control the production of the highest energy photons in the Universe, the gamma-rays. This was made possible using a novel method involving computer calculations that track the destiny of all photons in the galaxy, including the photons that are emitted by interstellar dust, as heat radiation.

Previous attempts to derive the distribution of all light in the Milky Way based on star counts have failed to account for the all-sky images of the Milky Way, including recent images provided by the European Space Agency's Planck Space Observatory, which map out heat radiation or infrared light.

Lead author Prof Cristina Popescu from the University of Central Lancashire, said: "We have not only determined the distribution of light energy in the Milky Way, but also made predictions for the stellar and interstellar dust content of the Milky Way."

By tracking all stellar photons and making predictions for how the Milky Way should appear in ultraviolet, visual and heat radiation, scientists have been able to calculate a complete picture of how stellar light is distributed throughout our Galaxy. An understanding of these processes is a crucial step towards gaining a complete picture of our Galaxy and its history.

The modelling of the distribution of light in the Milky Way follows on from previous research that Prof Popescu and Dr Richard Tuffs from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics conducted on modelling the stellar light from other galaxies, where the observer has an outside view.

Commenting on the research, Dr Tuffs, one of the co-authors of the paper, said: "It has to be noted that looking at galaxies from outside is a much easier task than looking from inside, as in the case of our Galaxy."

Scientists have also been able to show how the stellar light within our Galaxy affects the production of gamma-ray photons through interactions with cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are high-energy electrons and protons that control star and planet formation and the processes governing galactic evolution. They promote chemical reactions in interstellar space, leading to the formation of complex and ultimately life-critical molecules.

Dr Tuffs added: "Working backwards through the chain of interactions and propagations, one can work out the original source of the cosmic rays."

The research, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, was strongly interdisciplinary, bringing together optical and infrared astrophysics and astro-particle physics. Prof Popescu notes: "We had developed some of our computational programs before this research started, in the context of modelling spiral galaxies, and we need to thank the UK's Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC) for their support in the development of these codes. This research would also not have been possible without the support of the Leverhulme Trust, which is greatly acknowledged."

Explore further: Complex gas motion in the center of the Milky Way

More information: C. C. Popescu et al, A radiation transfer model for the Milky Way: I. Radiation fields and application to high-energy astrophysics, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2017). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx1282

How does the gas in the centre of the Milky Way behave? Researchers from Heidelberg University, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oxford, recently investigated the motion of gas clouds in a comprehensive ...

A team of astronomers from the University of Manchester, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Bonn have uncovered a hidden stellar birthplace in a nearby spiral galaxy, using a telescope in Chile. ...

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has found a signal at the center of the neighboring Andromeda galaxy that could indicate the presence of the mysterious stuff known as dark matter. The gamma-ray signal is similar to ...

VISTA's infrared capabilities have now allowed astronomers to see the myriad of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy much more clearly than ever before. The result is this record-breaking imagethe biggest infrared ...

Astronomers have developed a way to detect the ultraviolet (UV) background of the Universe, which could help explain why there are so few small galaxies in the cosmos.

A major revision is required in our understanding of our Milky Way Galaxy according to an international team led by Prof Noriyuki Matsunaga of the University of Tokyo. The Japanese, South African and Italian astronomers find ...

A three-man space crew from Italy, Russia and the United States on Friday arrived at the International Space Station for a five-month mission Friday.

August 21st will bring a history-making opportunity for the entire United States. On that day, every person in the country, including Hawaii and Alaska, will have an opportunity to witness at least a partial solar eclipse ...

Carnegie's Benjamin Shappee is part of a team of scientists, including an Australian amateur astronomer, which discovered a new comet last week.

NASA scientists have definitively detected the chemical acrylonitrile in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, a place that has long intrigued scientists investigating the chemical precursors of life.

(Phys.org)A team led by David Kipping of Columbia University has spotted what might be the first evidence of an exomoon. They have written a paper describing their findings and have uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server.

A Soyuz space capsule successfully blasted off for the International Space Station on Friday, carrying an American astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut and an Italian astronaut.

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Astrophysicists map out the light energy contained within the Milky ... - Phys.Org

Krishna Rajagopal, the William A.M. Burden professor of physics and former chair of the MIT faculty, has been named dean for digital learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the institute said in a July 26 news release.

Rajagopal will assume the post Sept. 1.

I am excited about this new challenge, as I will be helping MIT faculty members take their passions for teaching and learning to new levels in ways that can have long-lasting impact across MIT and around the world, the Indian American educator said in a statement.

Our digital learning efforts already reach thousands of students in MIT classrooms and millions of learners around the world. What makes this an exciting time for education is that as these technologies, as well as research on how people learn, evolve, they are transforming how we teach today, and will do so in ways that we cannot yet see and must invent, he said.

In his role, Rajagopal will lead efforts to empower MIT faculty to use digital technologies to augment and transform how they teach, MIT said.

He is charged with building and strengthening connections between academic departments and the Office of Vice President for Open Learning, to facilitate broad-based engagement and bottom-up change, it added.

Rajagopal will work with vice president for open learning Sanjay Sarma and senior associate dean of digital learning Isaac Chuang on the offices strategy and organization.

Krishna combines his stellar research career with a passion for improving teaching and learning and a remarkable ability to integrate diverse points of views into a unifying vision, Sarma, who made the Rajagopal announcement, said in a statement. In a time of significant changes in education, I am confident that Krishna will offer great guidance for our open learning initiatives. He will work to maintain and enhance MITs position as a leader in providing access to high-quality education around the world, and he will continue to improve teaching at MIT.

Previously, Rajagopal served as associate head for education in the department of physics, where he stewarded the department's undergraduate and graduate educational programs and became known for his dedication to students, the news release said.

Since joining the MIT faculty in 1997, Rajagopal has produced a significant body of research in theoretical physics focused largely on how quarks behave in extraordinary conditions such as the hot quark soup that filled the microseconds-old universe, conditions that provide a test bed for understanding how a complex world emerges from simple underlying laws, MIT said.

His work links nuclear and particle physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and string theory, it added.

He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004. He is a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow and won the Everett Moore Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2011 and the Buechner Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 1999, according to his bio.

Rajagopal grew up in suburban Toronto after his family moved there from Munich when he was less than 1 year old.

He graduated from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and then earned a doctorate degree at Princeton University. After stints as a junior fellow at Harvard University and a Fairchild Fellow at Caltech he joined the MIT faculty in 1997.

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Physics Professor Krishna Rajagopal Named Dean of Digital ... - India West

Like the solar storms and space radioactivity he has tirelessly chased in his research, the 49-year-old physics lecturer at MUs Faculty of Science has been a local and international force to be reckoned with in the fields of global radiation and cosmic ray research and development.

Ruffolo created new theories of turbulent transport of cosmic rays and developed a widely recognised computer software model to predict the effects on Earth of a solar storm.

He also led the establishment of a neutron monitor in Thailand to detect galactic cosmic rays at the worlds highest geomagnetic cut-off energy (about 17 GV). Out of the worlds 40 neutron monitor stations, the Princess Sirindhorn Neutron Monitor near the summit of Doi Inthanon (Thailands highest mountain) in Chiang Mai province was the worlds first to measure real-time cosmic rays.

Ruffolo was granted Thai nationality in 2012. He received an honour as the Thailand Research Fund (TRF)s Senior Research Scholar in 2016.

A former gifted child, who surpassed age peers to graduate with a PhD at the age of 22 in 1991 at University of Chicago, Ruffolo has come to love Thailand. He first worked here as a high school physics instructor before moving on to university teaching.

After I obtained the PhD, I wanted to do something for Thai society; there were few astrophysicists in Thailand at that time, he recalls. I wanted to be partake in grooming Thai students to become future astrophysicists and space physics scientists. There are more scientists now but there should be even more of them and Thai people should have a thorough understanding of the solar winds, he said.

Although solar storms have not yet killed anyone or torn down any buildings, they could cause blackouts and destroy satellites and spacecraft used for communications. Cosmic rays from solar wind turbulence could also affect human health as people travel by plane or in space. Ruffolo said he would continue studying cosmic rays in relations to the Earth climate to help build a global disaster warning system. And he will pursue other new research that would benefit Thailand and the world.

Scientist is an honourable job that is essential to a countrys development, so I want Thai youths to be interested in studying physics more. I want them to see it as a freedom in learning. Studying science is fun and challenging as you have to find answers for new questions, he said.

Usually children are interested in space but it is difficult to link that interest to physics, which people perceive as a matter of formulas and calculation. Actually space physics is an art, so if we can let children see that physics is fun, while space learning is about applying imagination to something that kids are keen about, he said.

I want parents to let their children feel free to do what they like, are good at and want to do not just follow societys value that academically excellent students must become doctors and engineers. If any kid likes science and wants to become a scientist, the parents should support him or her, he added.

The winner of Thailands annual outstanding scientist award receives a trophy from HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn along with a Bt400,000 cash prize.

The new generation scientist awards 2017, which came with a trophy from the princess and Bt100,000 each, were granted to:

Assistant Professor Burapat Inceesungvorn from the Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University; Assistant Professor Benjapon Chalermsinsuwan from the Department of Chemical Technology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University; Assistant Professor Varodom Charoensawan from the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University; and Assistant Professor Viboon Tangwarodomnukun from the Department of Production Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkuts University of Technology Thonburi.

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Physics lecturer makes case for children to pursue science - The Nation

EVANSTON - In a first-of-its-kind analysis, Northwestern University astrophysicists have discovered that, contrary to previously standard lore, up to half of the matter in our Milky Way galaxy may come from distant galaxies. As a result, each one of us may be made in part from extragalactic matter.

Using supercomputer simulations, the research team found a major and unexpected new mode for how galaxies, including our own Milky Way, acquired their matter: intergalactic transfer. The simulations show that supernova explosions eject copious amounts of gas from galaxies, which causes atoms to be transported from one galaxy to another via powerful galactic winds. Intergalactic transfer is a newly identified phenomenon, which simulations indicate will be critical for understanding how galaxies evolve.

Given how much of the matter out of which we formed may have come from other galaxies, we could consider ourselves space travelers or extragalactic immigrants, said Daniel Angls-Alczar, a postdoctoral fellow in Northwesterns astrophysics center, CIERA (Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics), who led the study. It is likely that much of the Milky Ways matter was in other galaxies before it was kicked out by a powerful wind, traveled across intergalactic space and eventually found its new home in the Milky Way.

Galaxies are far apart from each other, so even though galactic winds propagate at several hundred kilometers per second, this process occurred over several billion years.

Professor Claude-Andr Faucher-Gigure and his research group, along with collaborators from the FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments) project, which he co-leads, had developed sophisticated numerical simulations that produced realistic 3-D models of galaxies, following a galaxys formation from just after the Big Bang to the present day. Angls-Alczar then developed state-of-the-art algorithms to mine this wealth of data and quantify how galaxies acquire matter from the universe.

The study, which required the equivalent of several million hours of continuous computing, was published today (July 27 in the U.K.) by the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

This study transforms our understanding of how galaxies formed from the Big Bang, said Faucher-Gigure, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of physics and astronomy in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

What this new mode implies is that up to one-half of the atoms around us including in the solar system, on Earth and in each one of us comes not from our own galaxy but from other galaxies, up to one million light years away, he said.

By tracking in detail the complex flows of matter in the simulations, the research team found that gas flows from smaller galaxies to larger galaxies, such as the Milky Way, where the gas forms stars. This transfer of mass through galactic winds can account for up to 50 percent of matter in the larger galaxies.

In our simulations, we were able to trace the origins of stars in Milky Way-like galaxies and determine if the star formed from matter endemic to the galaxy itself or if it formed instead from gas previously contained in another galaxy, said Angls-Alczar, the studys corresponding author.

In a galaxy, stars are bound together: a large collection of stars orbiting a common center of mass. After the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, the universe was filled with a uniform gas no stars, no galaxies. But there were tiny perturbations in the gas, and these started to grow by force of gravity, eventually forming stars and galaxies. After galaxies formed, each had its own identity.

Our origins are much less local than we previously thought, said Faucher-Gigure, a CIERA member. This study gives us a sense of how things around us are connected to distant objects in the sky.

The findings open a new line of research in understanding galaxy formation, the researchers say, and the prediction of intergalactic transfer can now be tested. The Northwestern team plans to collaborate with observational astronomers who are working with the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories to test the simulation predictions.

The research was supported by NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Northwesterns CIERA. The simulations were run and analyzed using NSFs Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment supercomputing facilities, as well as Northwesterns Quest high-performance computer cluster.

The study is titled The Cosmic Baryon Cycle and Galaxy Mass Assembly in the FIRE Simulations. In addition to Angls-Alczar and Faucher-Gigure, other authors include Duan Kere (University of California, San Diego), Philip F. Hopkins (Caltech), Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley) and Norman Murray (Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics).

More information on the research can be found at Northwesterns galaxy formation group website and on the FIRE project website.

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Milky Way's origins are not what they seem - Northwestern University NewsCenter

A Montana State University gravitational physicist has received funding for a research project that aims to answer fundamental questions about the universe.

NASA awarded $750,000 to Nicolas Yunes for his project "Exploring Extreme Gravity: Neutron Stars, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves." Yunes is a founding member of the MSU eXtreme Gravity Institute, known as XGI, and an associate professor in the Department of Physics in MSU's College of Letters and Science. The award, which covers a three-year period, came from NASA's Established Program to Simulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR.

Yunes' project is one of 22 selected to receive EPSCoR grants for research and technology development in areas critical to NASA's mission and one of 13 to receive the top award of $750,000, according to the agency.

"This is very exciting," Yunes said. "This grant will allow us to explore fundamental questions about gravity and our universe."

Yunes said the award will also allow him to grow his research group within the eXtreme Gravity Institute.

"The institute has really become a hub for this kind of education and research in the Mountain West," Yunes said. "As a result, we're attracting many great students, researchers and faculty to study here in Montana, and this NASA funding is indispensable to our growth and mission."

The project will focus on improving and developing tools to extract as much astrophysics information as possible from X-ray data obtained with NASA'S Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, known as NICER, a payload installed in June aboard the International Space Station that will provide high-precision measurements of neutron stars. Neutron stars are objects that contain ultra-dense matter at the threshold of collapse into black holes, according to NASA.

Researchers in Yunes' group will work to create a framework to test Einstein's Theory of General Relativity using X-ray data from NICER, as well as gravitational wave data gathered by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA, a gravitational wave observatory in space.

"This will allow for consistency checks of Einstein's theory and the search for modified gravity anomalies with neutron stars and black holes," Yunes said.

The researchers will also learn more about nuclear physics and general relativity by combining NICER X-ray data with information about gamma rays gained from NASA telescopes, as well as gravitational wave data gleaned from gravitational wave detectors, such as the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or advanced LIGO.

Yunes said his project is directly related to NASA's strategic mission to better understand the universe through observation and its mission of discovery and knowledge.

"The region of the universe where gravity is unbearably strong and dynamically changing - the extreme gravity universe - is one of the last unturned stones," he said. "This is in part because extreme gravity objects, like neutron stars and black holes, are difficult to resolve due to their size and distance from Earth.

"NASA's investments in neutron star astrophysics and in space-borne gravitational wave astrophysics are aimed at resolving such objects and, for the first time, exploring the extreme gravity universe in detail. We want to aid in this endeavor by developing the tools and the understanding needed to extract the most information from the data."

MSU's eXtreme Gravity Institute was created to further the understanding of astrophysics and fundamental physics through extreme gravity phenomena, including black holes and neutron stars. XGI researchers have contributed to the first detection of gravitational waves, have published research about a new era of discovery in gravitational physics and have won prestigious awards, including a Breakthrough Prize, the General Relativity and Gravitation Young Scientist Prize, and a L'Oreal USA For Women in Science fellowship, among other honors.

Project co-investigators include XGI astrophysicist Bennett Link and gravitational physicist Neil Cornish, both professors in MSU's Department of Physics, as well as Holly Truitt, director of University of Montana's Broader Impacts Group.

In addition to Yunes' research team, another MSU research team has received EPSCoR funding for 2017.

Brock LaMeres, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in MSU's College of Engineering, has received $100,000 for his ongoing project to develop a radiation-tolerant computer technology for use in outer space. The funding will be used to launch a satellite containing the computer prototype from the International Space Station.

That NASA selected to fund the proposals shows that MSU researchers are pursuing novel work that benefits the agency, said Angela Des Jardins, director of Montana NASA EPSCoR and the Montana Space Grant Consortium.

"NASA EPSCoR opportunities bring our capabilities to NASA's attention," Des Jardins said. "As a result, not only are we providing NASA with strategic expertise in key missions but we are also creating valuable research infrastructure here at home."

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MSU gravitational physicist receives NASA award to explore extreme gravity and the universe - Space Daily

Astronomy student Sarah Ballard was flattered starstruck, even when her famous professor,Geoff Marcy, began meeting her outside of class in the spring of 2005 to discuss new planets and galaxies.

It was exhilarating, says Ballard, then a 20-year-old at the University of California at Berkeley, and deeply affirming. He said I had promise to go really far.

But in the end, it was Marcy who went way too far.

Their conversations soon became sexual in nature, Ballard, now 33, says, with Marcy divulging details about his sex life and asking about her own experiences. Then, later that summer after giving Ballard a ride home, Marcy told me to relax and started rubbing the back of my neck, she says.

Ballard fled the car, but like so many women who experience sexual harassment, the blow to her self-esteem stayed with her.

I dont know of a single person, no matter how cruel the harassment or the assault, who doesnt feel some of that guilt and shame, says Ballard, and wonders, Could I have done something differently? Perhaps it was my fault?

Ballard struggled over whether to confront Marcy or tell school authorities. His support was critical to Ballard getting into graduate school, and she worried about potential backlash from the science community.

So when Marcys inexplicably cooled toward Ballard, she says she was both relieved and troubled.

It was clear that the experience had deeply affected her, says science writer Sarah Scoles, who interned with Ballard the following summer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and whom Ballard confided in about the incident.

She trusted (Marcy) professionallyhe had broken that trust and taken advantage of his power over both her and her career.

Ballard graduated from Berkeley in 2007 and went on to Harvard, where she earned aPh.D. in astronomy and astrophysics. Then, while attending a Women in Astronomy conference in 2011, another Berkeley student told her there were recent reports of harassment in the department and mentioned Marcys name.

Watch Sarah Ballard on the seriesPeople Features: Women Speak Out, available now, on the new People/Entertainment Weekly Network (PEN). Go topeople.com/PEN, or download the PEN app on your favorite device.

For the first time, I said aloud, That happened to me! says Ballard, who was determined not to let it happen to any more women.

I couldnt protect myself then, she adds, but I could protect women who are 20 today.

Ballard became one of four anonymous complainants in a school investigation of the renowned professor, which ended in 2015 with the university determining that Marcy had violated their sexual harassment policies.

We are well aware that any harassment of students, staff and faculty by members of our faculty represents an unacceptable breach of the academic or professional supervisory relationship, said a Berkeley spokesperson, an a recent statement issued to PEOPE.

Marcy was put on notice, but was not removed from his position at the school.

When I saw that I felt the beginning of what would be months of grief, Ballard recalls. It was my first realization that the academic system that I thought was so meritorious, that I wanted to actually spend my life within, was deeply unfair.I wouldnt receive any justice and he could go on and harass other women.

Frustrated and upset, the four women decided to go public with their story soon after, with Ballard using her real name in the media.

For more on Sarah Ballards story, check out this weeks issue, on newsstands Friday.

It was a gesture that said I wasnt afraid, she says.

The science community rallied in support of the women, with thousands signing a petition against sexual harassment, leading to Marcys resignation and a public letter of apology posted on his website, saying in part, While I do not agree with each complaint that was made, it is clear that my behavior was unwelcomed by some women. I take full responsibility and hold myself completely accountable for my actions and the impact they had.

Today, Ballard is living her dream as a postdoctoral fellow for exoplanetary science at M.I.T. in Boston, where she spends her days focused on planets orbiting the stars, and continues her fight against sexual harassment in the science community.

The more women come out saying, This happened to me, the more (other) women willthink, That validates my own experience. Perhaps I, too, will move forward and think about protecting other women, Ballard says.

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'I Was Sexually Harassed by My Professor': After Years of Silent Struggle, Astronomer Sarah Ballard Tells Her Story - PEOPLE.com

Five Princeton University professors have been selected to receive 2017 Simons Investigators awards, which are presented by the New York-based Simons Foundation to outstanding scientists nationwide engaged in mathematics, physics, astrophysics, theoretical computer science, mathematical modeling of living systems, and Math+X, which encourages novel collaborations between mathematics and other fields in science or engineering.

The awards provide $100,000 annually for an initial five years and can be renewed for an additional five years.

Igor Rodnianski, a professor of mathematics, was recognized as a "leading figure in the field of partial differential equations" who has "proven theorems concerning the full nonlinear dynamics of the Einstein equations, in both the weak and strong field regimes, and has obtained new results regarding gravitational radiation associated to black hole spacetimes."

Allan Sly, a professor of mathematics who joined the Princeton from the University of California-Berkeley last year, was cited for resolving "long-standing open problems on the computational complexity of phase transitions and on the dynamics of the Ising model."

Steven Gubser, a professor of physics, was cited for his "foundational work on the gauge-string duality and its applications to heavy-ion and condensed matter physics, including a gravitational dual of superconductivity and studies of bulk flows and quark-gluon plasmas." He also was noted for his work on "semi-classical strings in anti-de Sitter space."

Eve Ostriker, a professor of astrophysical sciences, was recognized for her "major contributions to our understanding of the role of the interstellar medium in star formation and galactic structure and evolution, with a focus on the role of turbulence and on the effects of energy returned by massive stars to the interstellar medium."

Amit Singer, a professor of mathematics and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, was cited as "one of the leaders in the mathematical analysis of noisy data provided by cryo-EM."

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Five Princeton professors receive Simons Investigators awards - Princeton University

During the fall of 2016, Anya Nugent 18 began looking into researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who were doing work in astrophysics or cosmology.

Berkeley Lab, where Nugent also worked last summer, is a member of the national lab system supported by the U.S Department of Energy, and conducts research across a vast range of scientific disciplines.

Technologies developed at Berkeley have generated thousands of jobs, and billions of dollars in revenue.

This summer, Nugent is participating inBerkeley Lab Undergraduate Research (BLUR) program to study galaxy clustering. After contacting Shirley Ho, the senior scientist at Berkeley Lab, Nugent was put in contact with Hos post-doc, Chamberlain and Einstein Fellow Zachary Slepian.

Slepian, Nugents mentor, and Nugent discussed several possible research projects to pursue over the summer, but eventually decided to study galaxy clustering as a way to learn more about dark energy and General Relativity. Though we know that dark energy and gravity affect how distances between objects change with time, we still do not completely understand their fundamental properties. By studying galaxy clustering, we can expand our knowledge of these topics, which is key to comprehending how our universe works, she said.

To measure galaxy clustering, Slepian and Nugent are using a three-point correlation function (3PCF), which examines triangles formed by galaxy triplets by measuring two triangle sides and the angle between them. Traditionally, the 3PCF has been too computationally complex to measure. However, Slepian discovered a new way of analyzing galaxy triplets, which, in turn, altered the scale of the function, thus making it less complex. A group at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) was able to make a code for this innovative algorithm, which will soon be used to analyze the results from the 3PCF and galaxy clustering.

Anya Nugent 18

Concentration: physics and Hispanic studies double major

Hometown: Orinda, Calif.

High School: Campolindo High School

Before the code can be used for scientific purposes, the team must implement an edge correction code and a method for weighting data correctly, which is Nugents part of the project. The edge correction code will adjust jagged astronomical survey boundaries, which normally would negatively affect the results.

The work Nugent is doing at BLUR will culminate with a paper and presentation at the end of the summer, but her research concerning the 3PCF will not end there. Once weve finished these codes, we can start running them on astronomical surveys and simulations so we can analyze the 3PCF and galaxy clustering. This is research I will be doing in the spring for my thesis, said Nugent.

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Astrophysics, Galaxy Clusters and the Key to the Universe - Hamilton College News

Education should be based on real life experiences, observations and happenings, is a simple thought that renowned Indian scientist Dr Yash Pal Singh left behind, after his unfortunate demise on Tuesday.

A Padma Vibhushan recipient, who is a globally acclaimed physicist, scholar and an education reformer, died at the age of 90, on July 25, in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. The cause of death is unknown.

Across the expanse of his illustrious career, Pal has made significant contributions to the field of science and to the study of cosmic rays, astrophysics, high-energy physics. Prominent individuals from Pune share their grief on his demise.

His scientific contributions are unparalleled of course, but what sets him apart is his ability to communicate science and reach out to the masses. Through television and different mediums, he really simplified science and made it accessible to all. Such a contribution to the field of science and education is very rare. With his death, India has lost a great soul, saidDr Prabhakar Ingle, head, science communication, CSIR-NCL, Pune.

Former chairman of UGC, Arun Nigavekar, spoke of his encounter with Pal who held chairmanship of the UGC from 1986 to 1991. After he finished the chairmanship,I was made the member of UGC and since then we worked together in many committees.The most monumental work that he left behind, the effect of which would be quite lasting, is his report on renovation and rejuvenation of higher education in India submitted to the Ministry of Human Resource Development on June 24, 2009. He fought the landmark case and won, against fake private universities of Chhattisgarh. He did most of the ground work for the case, compiled data and developed the arguments for the case. This was just one contribution among many, and withhis demise we have lost a great human being, he said.

Further, expressing his grief and sharing his personal experience with the scholar, Nitin Karmalkar, vice chancellor of Savitribai Phule Pune University,responded, I had an opportunity to personally travel with him, and meet him, when he had come to inaugurate the electronic science department some 20-25 years ago. At that time, I was a faculty, and was in awe to find such a humble person in an internationally acclaimed scholar like him. Despite his exemplary credentials, he would humbly mix with children of all ages to explain to them the complexities of science in the simplest of ways. He was the pioneer of sensitising, simplifying and popularising scientific education for all. Indeed, India has lost a great mind and a scientific stalwart.

Dr Pal, was also on the advisory committee of Flame University, and the current vice chancellor of the varsity, Dr Devi Singh, expressed,I had the fortune to know him personally and work with him. He would always bring something new, something out-of-the-box to the table, every time. He had a phenomenal contribution to higher education, and is a very respected man around all our faculties and together we grieve this loss.

His last rites were conducted on Tuesday, at 3 pm.

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Yash Pal attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his PhD

In 2000, received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Popularization of Science

In 2006, received the Meghnad Saha Medal

In 2009, he received the Kalinga Prize, awarded by UNESCO for the popularisation of science

Served as the Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi from 2007 to 2012

He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2013

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'Dr Yash Pal Singh simplified science for the masses' - Hindustan Times

Krishna Rajagopal, the William A.M. Burden Professor of Physics and former chair of the MIT faculty, has been named dean for digital learning, effective Sept. 1. This new position expands leadership roles for faculty within the Office of the Vice President for Open Learning, which recently launched the MIT Integrated Learning Initiative and the Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Laboratory.

As dean for digital learning, Rajagopal will lead efforts to empower MIT faculty to use digital technologies to augment and transform how they teach. He is charged with building and strengthening connections between academic departments and the Office of Vice President for Open Learning, to facilitate broad-based engagement and bottom-up change. Rajagopal will catalyze, promote, and disseminate faculty innovations in MIT residential education, and, he will continue to support the sharing of a broad range of MIT knowledge and perspectives with learners around the globe.

Within the Office of the Vice President for Open Learning, Residential Education, MITx, OpenCourseWare, and the Digital Learning Lab will report to Rajagopal under the leadership of Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning, who made the announcement today. Rajagopal will work with Sarma and Senior Associate Dean of Digital Learning Isaac Chuang on the offices strategy and organization. As a member of Academic Council, Rajagopal will provide advice and perspectives to MIT President L. Rafael Reif and the senior administration.

Krishna combines his stellar research career with a passion for improving teaching and learning and a remarkable ability to integrate diverse points of views into a unifying vision, Sarma says. In a time of significant changes in education, I am confident that Krishna will offer great guidance for our open learning initiatives. He will work to maintain and enhance MITs position as a leader in providing access to high-quality education around the world, and he will continue to improve teaching at MIT.

As chair of the MIT faculty, Rajagopal distinguished himself as a strong advocate for the faculty. He was known for his listening skills, inclusive style, and ability to help colleagues and departments optimize and achieve their goals, including those involving the development and launch of new educational pathways for MITs students.

Some of his accomplishments as former chair of the faculty include joining with Dennis Freeman, then dean of undergraduate education, to assemble a group of faculty from MITs five schools, which conducted an in-depth study of the role of algorithmic reasoning and computational thinking in the context of the education of MIT undergraduates. He was also responsible for the charging of the Faculty Policy Committee Sub-Committee on Sub-Term Subjects and the subsequent implementation of many of its recommendations; building a new faculty governance website; and leading efforts in the creation of MITs new Master of Applied Science (MASc) degree, an umbrella degree type introduced in fall 2016 for one-year professional masters degrees that include a capstone project.

Previously, Rajagopal served as associate head for education in the Department of Physics, where he stewarded the department's undergraduate and graduate educational programs and became known for his dedication to students. In that role, he facilitated and supported new MITx activities that improved the on-campus teaching of freshman physics and junior lab, as well as the first massive open online courses (MOOCs) on intermediate quantum mechanics and advanced quantum field theory.

I am excited about this new challenge, as I will be helping MIT faculty members take their passions for teaching and learning to new levels in ways that can have long-lasting impact across MIT and around the world, Rajagopal says. Our digital learning efforts already reach thousands of students in MIT classrooms and millions of learners around the world. What makes this an exciting time for education is that as these technologies, as well as research on how people learn, evolve, they are transforming how we teach today, and will do so in ways that we cannot yet see and must invent.

Since joining the MIT faculty in 1997, Rajagopal has produced a significant body of research in theoretical physics focused largely on how quarks ordinarily confined within protons and neutrons behave in extraordinary conditions such as the hot quark soup that filled the microseconds-old universe, conditions that provide a test bed for understanding how a complex world emerges from simple underlying laws. His work links nuclear and particle physics, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and string theory.

Rajagopal is the author of about 100 papers that have been cited more than 16,000 times, and has mentored more than two dozen PhD students and postdocs. He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2004. He is a Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow and won the Everett Moore Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 2011 and the Buechner Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 1999.

Rajagopal grew up in suburban Toronto; his family moved there from Munich when he was less than 1 year old. Influenced by an outstanding teacher who brought pioneering advances in recombinant DNA and molecular biology into his public high school biology class, Rajagopal arrived at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, planning to major in biology. His freshman physics class rekindled his earlier interest in physics, and he says he much appreciates the formative educational influences that shaped his own experience.

He graduated from Queens in 1988 and completed his PhD at Princeton University in 1993. After stints as a junior fellow at Harvard University and a Fairchild Fellow at Caltech he joined the MIT faculty in 1997. Rajagopal has spent one year each at the University of California at Berkeley and at CERN, the physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts, with his wife and two sons.

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Krishna Rajagopal named dean for digital learning - MIT News

Source: The HitavadaDate: 25 Jul 2017 11:28:03

Staff Reporter,

Raipur,

Professor K P Singh, eminent scientist and X-ray Astronomer from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai, explained that like visible radiation generally used for investigation of celestial bodies, X-ray also plays very important role in this work

Professor K P Singh, eminent scientist and X-ray Astronomer from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) Mumbai and Professor Alok Chand Gupta from Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (Nainital) shared their views with students and faculty members of School of Studies in Physics and Astrophysics, Pt Ravishankar Shukla University (PRSU), on Monday, during a one day seminar on Astronomy and Astrophysics. Professor Singh explained that like visible radiation generally used for investigation of celestial bodies, X-ray also plays very important role in this work.

However, X-ray coming from space cannot reach to the Earth, as it is blocked by Earths atmosphere. Hence we need to design a special kind of telescope and install it on a satellite above the atmosphere. Indian astronomers have designed X-telescopes on-board ASTROSAT, this satellite was launched in 2015 by ISRO and now successfully working, he said.

There are many other telescopes and detectors on ASTROSAT. This is Indias first multi-wavelength astronomical mission capable of simultaneous observations in many electromagnetic bands. Hence it has got attention from the astronomers worldwide, he added. He also said that celestial objects like White dwarfs, Neutron stars, and Black holes have very intense gravitational field, hence they accrete matter from the companion.

Falling material can not fall directly to the Black hole, hence it starts spiraling around it and form an accretion disk, this disk gets heated to very high temperatures, which releases huge amount of energy in X-ray band. Hence X-ray telescope are important to study compact objects like White dwarfs, Neutron stars and Black holes, which are otherwise invisible or difficult to see in other electromagnetic radiation.

Professor Gupta from ARIES explained how an active galactic nucleus (AGN) is formed by accretion process on to a super massive black hole. He also discussed in detail about Blazar which is a special class of AGN. Students also interacted with Professor S.K. Pandey, Vice Chancellor of the University and famous Astrophysicist. Other participants includes: Head of Physics Department Professor N Brahme, Faculty members and students from Center for Basic Sciences.

Pt Ravishankar Shukla University Vice Chancellor Professor S K Pandey, who is also an astrophysicist, HoD Dr Namita Brahme and Director Dr N K Chakradhari were present on the occasion.

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Seminar on Astronomy, Astrophysics held - The Hitavada