This term's topic
General Format: We will have usually one talk aimed to last 20 to 30 minutes, followed by discussion within the group. Presentations should be prepared in the usual colloquium format, e.g., power point. When the speaker announces a reference paper, please make the effort to read it in advance so that we can all actively participate in the parley. An obvious place to look for potential papers remains:
http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/astro-ph
We also strongly encourage students to become familiar and search the ADS astronomy page for articles that are already published, and thus peer reviewed, at:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html
* We might also have external speakers this quarter, and the schedule below will be updated as information becomes available.
A list of "in charge" discussion leaders/speakers will be updated weekly and can be found here:
Date | Speaker | ||||||||||||||||||||
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organizational meeting: schedule, new members, theme of the quarter, etc... | |||||||||||||||||||||
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 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Drexel's Ninth Annual Research Day
no JClub. Go see the posters! Location: John A. Daskalakis Athletic Center, 33rd and Market Streets
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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
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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 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Michael French
Title: tbd | |||||||||||||||||||||
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.
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Sanghamitra Deb
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Danny Pan
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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:
(DRL A2 is also in David Rittenhouse Laboratory, on 33rd and Walnut, but on the first floor)