Journal Musings

“2443 Co-authors” was a headline in last fall’s SPS Observer, referring to the first journal article posting by a collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. That’s almost one author per word! Who would read this article? Well, at least 2,443 people, to check that their names are there and spelled right.

Fall 2011 issue

What is Involved in Getting a Ph.D. Abroad?
Find out first-hand from SPS member Anna Quider, a third year graduate student in astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, UK. Anna is blogging about her experiences as an American-trained student working towards a physics Ph.D in the United Kingdom. Her goal is to give US physics students an idea of what it’s like to study abroad for a graduate degree, as she knew very little about life as an international grad student before she became one.

Meet Anna | Read the Blog | More student publications

New Paper Published in JURP

Determination of a Correlation of Sunspot Number and 20.1 MHz Solar Radio Bursts
J.A. Burleson, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN

Abstract
There are many phenomena about the Sun that scientists have yet to fully understand. Some of these questions involve the sun’s magnetic field, sunspots, solar flares, and solar radio bursts. We know that due to differential rotation the magnetic fields get tangled and twisted resulting in sunspots. It is theorized that solar radio bursts are a result of solar flares accelerating charged particles in the magnetic field. These accelerated particles emit a wide variety of frequencies. Using a two dipole antenna and a Radio JOVE receiver kit, we obtained over two years of solar burst data at 20.1 MHz. Using these data, a graph was created comparing the visual sunspot number and 20.1 MHz solar burst data. Comparing this to 10.7 cm solar flux data, which is a result of the synchrotron mechanism, the cyclic nature seems identical. We then plotted the sunspot number versus 20.1 MHz radio bursts and found the coefficient of correlation to be 0.65. From this experimental result as well as the theory, we show that there is a relationship between sunspots and solar radio bursts.

Physics Today: Octoberl 2011
This frame from a numerical simulation shows the unhappy denouement for a neutron star that strays too close to a black hole. Most of the neutron star has been gobbled up by the central black hole; the remainder forms an orbiting disk, seen here in orange. The article on page 32 by Thomas Baumgarte and Stuart Shapiro contains other snapshots from the simulation and describes how numerical relativists deal with the challenge of black-hole physics and what they have learned from their simulations. (Courtesy of the University of Illinois relativity group.)