| Friday, September 06, 2024
|
|
|
New and exciting activities in the
McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences
|
|
|
Recent News from MacCenter Fellows
|
|
|
Deciphering the mysteries of planetary formation
|
|
|
|
Postdoc Zoltán Váci is a geologist whose interests lie in space. He is particularly fascinated by the first few million years of Solar System formation and the processes that transformed primordial gas and dust into pebbles, cobbles, boulder-sized material, and eventually into planets. Through his research, he aims to answer fundamental questions about the composition of the Universe, the structure of the Solar System, and the processes involved in planet formation.
|
|
|
Field Notes: South Pacific
|
|
|
Aboard the massive research vessel Thomas G. Thompson, sailing 1,600 miles northeast of New Zealand near the Polynesian islands of Samoa, WashU graduate students Adrea Williams, Judy Zhang and their team were about to drop 30 seismic monitoring devices up to 6,000 meters (19,000 feet) from the ship’s deck to the ocean floor. Once anchored, the devices were designed to pick up on the inner rumblings of the Earth below them, measuring seismic activity up to 400 miles further down into mantle.
“This is a unique natural laboratory,” said Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings
|
| |
|
Distinguished Professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, chief scientist on the 28-day research cruise, which was completed last year.
|
|
|
| Welcome our newest MCSS Fellow!
|
Karthik Ramanathan recently joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. He is an astroparticle experimentalist hunting for dark matter.
|
|
|
DR-TES is preparing for launch |
MCSS and NASA have sponsored another mission for Professor Henric Krawczynski and his team. Krawczynski, Dana Braun, Garry Simburger, Richard Bose, Matt Fritts, Kun Hu, Ephraim Gau, Sohee Chun, and Nicole Rodriguez Cavero headed out to New Mexico in mid-August to begin assembly of DR-TES (Dilution Refrigerator Transition Edge Sensor), a balloon-borne mission that is scheduled to launch as early as tomorrow from Fort Sumner, New Mexico. It aims to observe X-rays or gamma-rays with unprecedented energy resolutions utilizing a low-temperature TES (Transition Edge Sensor) detector array and a mini-DR (miniature Dilution Refrigerator).
|
|
|
MacCenter Fellows in the News
|
|
|
First Fridays at the St. Louis Science Center
Friday, September 6
5-9pm, St. Louis Science Center
|
| Chlorine cycle on Mars driven by Heterogeneous electrochemistryTBA
|
Brown Bag Series
Alian Wang
Friday, September 6
Noon, Rudolph 301
|
|
|
EEPS Colloquium
Bethany Ehlmann
California Institute of Technology
Thursday, September 12
11:30am, Rudolph 301
|
| Physics Colloquium
Manel Errando
Washington University in St. Louis
Wednesday, September 18
3:00pm, Crow 204
|
|
|
Subscribe to the MCSS Messenger
|
Did someone forward this MCSS Messenger to you? Would you like to be added to the email list?
|
|
|
| McDonnell Center Contacts |
|
|
Compiled and edited by Alison Verbeck. Please send any contributions to alison@wustl.edu.
|
|
|
© 2024 All rights reserved
|
|
|
|
