Astro Journal Club at Drexel


* Tuesdays, 2 - 3 p.m. *
* Disque Hall, Rm 808 (if needed, Rm 909)*

Date Speaker
  • April 3rd
  • organizational meeting:

    schedule, new members, theme of the quarter, etc...

  • April 10th
  • Dean\u2019s Distinguished Lecture Series: Leon Lederman

    Title: Sputnik, Frogs and the Future of Science Education

    2:30pm Lecture, Auditorium; 4:00 pm Reception, Atrium

  • April 17th
  • Drexel's Ninth Annual Research Day

    no JClub. Go see the posters!

    Location: John A. Daskalakis Athletic Center, 33rd and Market Streets

  • April 24th
  • Jeff Blomquist

    Title: Probing dark energy using baryonic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum as a cosmological ruler

    by Chris Blake, Karl Glazebrook

    -to be found at: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0301632

    -for additional information, see also the following paper: http://cmb.as.arizona.edu/~eisenste/acousticpeak/acoustic.pdf

  • May 1st
  • Michael Kaczmarczik

    Title: Measuring the matter density using baryon oscillations in the SDSS

    by Percival et al.

    -to be found at: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0301632

  • May 8th
  • Michael French

    Title: tbd

  • May 15th
  • Tamara Bogdanovic, Univ. of Maryland

    Title: Alignment of the spins of supermassive black holes prior to coalescence

    Abstract: The results of recent, fully relativistic numerical simulations of coalescing black holes imply that in certain alignments the emission of gravitational waves can produce a kick of several thousand kilometers per second. Such kick velocities exceed galactic escape speeds, and unless there is a mechanism to prevent this, many galaxies that have undergone mergers would be without a central black hole. This is in contradiction to the observation that galaxies with bulges all appear to have central supermassive black holes. We propose that in most galactic mergers, torques from accreting gas suffice to align the orbit and spins of both black holes with the large-scale gas flow. Such a configuration has a maximum kick speed <200 km/s, safely below galactic escape speeds. We predict, however, that in mergers of galaxies without much gas, the remnant will be kicked out several percent of the time. Several other predictions follow from our scenario, including implications for jet alignment angles and X-type radio sources.

  • May 22nd
  • Sanghamitra Deb

    Title:

  • May 29th
  • Danny Pan

    Title:

  • June 5th
  • John Parejko

    Title: tbd


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    Note: Penn talks that don't clash with ours will also be added FYI.

    - Penn Journal Club is at 1pm on Fridays in DRL Astro Room.

    Locations:

  • Disque 808 is found on the 8th floor of Disque Hall

  • DRL Astro Room is found on the 4th floor of David Rittenhouse Laboratory, on 33rd and Walnut

    (DRL A2 is also in David Rittenhouse Laboratory, on 33rd and Walnut, but on the first floor)

  • See the home pages of Drexel and Penn for more details, maps, etc.

  • e-mail to: constant@drexel.edu with questions or suggestions regarding our Journal

  • See here for the archive of previous astro seminars.