Month: March 2022

Please join me in congratulating Yang Yang for being awarded a Harvard-SAO Predoctoral Fellowship. Over the past few years, several PhD students from our department have had the opportunity to work at other research institutions as part of their graduate education. Yang Yang is the fourth student in recent years (joining Amy Gall, Xiuriu Zhao, and Jordan Eagle) to be awarded this prestigious fellowship. Kudos to Prof. Takacs for the mentorship and support he has provided to help Ms. Yang achieve this opportunity. At the SAO she will use their electron beam ion trap to generate laboratory astrophysics atomic data for AtomDB, the databased maintained by SAO for the analysis of astrophysical spectra. She works closely with one of our alums, Dr. Gall, and is involved in collaborative work with the University of Georgia and Auburn University funded by NASA. This is a very exciting achievement for Ms. Yang!

August 17, 2017 was a watershed moment for multimessenger astronomy when the gravitational waves and photons from a kilonova were detected for the first time. And GW170817 continues to surprise. A kilonova results from the merger of neutron stars and is thought to be the source of heavy elements such as gold.

Our colleague, Prof. Jon Zrake, was part of team that has monitored the evolution of X-rays from this source. Initially the source was fading, but in 2020 the fading stopped and has remained relatively constant since. This provides intriguing insight to the physics of neutron star mergers and the subsequent explosion. The behavior of the X-rays is somewhat puzzling, and this team has proffered two explanations to account for the behavior – one possibility is that we are seeing the afterglow of the kilonova. Another possibility is that we seeing the accretion signature of material falling into a blackhole formed by the merger of these neutron stars. If the constant brightness is due to an afterglow, we should see the source brighten again. If the result is due to accretion into the black hole, then the source should remain constant or fade away over the next few years. Either result will provide valuable insight to the physics of kilonova. This work was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and can be accessed here.

Alan Rowland, a first year Physics Ph.D. student, and Dylan Carroll, a genetics major, were finished second and third respective in SCBIO’s “Challenge Accepted” video competition. They developed videos highlighting their work in Dr. Podila’s lab. They described their work developing COVID-19 and tuberculosis sensors using smartphones. This work will increase access to such tests for people around the world. Read more about their fascinating work here.