History & Philosophy of Science & Medicine
Lindsay Brainard, Wash U, TBA
Life Sciences Building, Room 310 |
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Evolution, Ecology & Population Biology Seminar
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Evolution, Ecology & Population Biology Seminar
Gautam Dantas, WUSTL EEPB, "Predicting and Combating Pathogenic and Abiotic Disruptions to Diverse Microbiomes"
Rebstock 322 |
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Math Department Awards
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Math Department Awards
Math Department Awards Ceremony
Cupples I, room 199 |
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Earth and Planetary Sciences Colloquium
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Earth and Planetary Sciences Colloquium
Dustin Schroeder
Rudolph Hall, Room 203 |
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Colloquium: Dustin Schroeder
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Colloquium: Dustin Schroeder
Beyond images: getting deeper information from radar sounding data
Rudolph Hall, Room 203 |
Radio echo sounding is a uniquely powerful geophysical technique for studying the interior of ice sheets, glaciers, and icy planetary bodies. It can provide broad coverage and deep penetration as well as interpretable ice thickness, basal topography, and englacial radio stratigraphy. However, despite the long tradition of glaciological interpretation of radar images, quantitative analyses of radar sounding data are rare and face several technical challenges. These include attenuation uncertainty from unknown ice temperature and chemistry, clutter and losses from surface and volume scattering, and a lack of problem-specific radar theory. However, there is rich, often underexploited, information in modern radar sounding data, which is being collected over terrestrial and planetary ice at an unprecedented rate. The development and application of hypothesis-drive analysis approaches for these data can place observational constraints on the morphologic, hydrologic, geologic, mechanical, thermal, and oceanographic configurations of ice sheets and glaciers. These boundary conditions - and the physical processes which they express and control - are filling a fundamental gap in our ability to understanding the evolution of both marine and ice sheets and icy moons. These include the subglacial hydrology of marine ice sheets and the thermophysical structure of planetary ice shells.
Taking the Measure of Neutron Stars with NICER
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Taking the Measure of Neutron Stars with NICER
Dr. Simin Mahmoodifar, NASA Goddard
241 Compton |
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is NASA's new X-ray timing instrument onboard the ISS that was launched in June 2017. With a large effective area, low background, very precise absolute timing and great low energy response, NICER has been doing a fantastic job in observing many interesting phenomena related to neutron stars and black holes. One of the main goals of the NICER mission is to constrain the equation of state of ultra-dense matter by measuring the masses and radii of several rotation-powered millisecond pulsars. This is being done by fitting pulse waveform models that incorporate all relevant relativistic effects and atmospheric radiation transfer processes to the periodic soft X-ray modulations produced by the rotation of hot spots located near the magnetic polar caps of these pulsars. Some of the other interesting topics that are being studied with NICER includes phenomena related to Type I X-ray bursts, which are thermonuclear flashes observed from the surfaces of accreting neutron stars in Low Mass X-ray Binaries, such as photospheric radius expansion and burst oscillations. NICER's large effective area and excellent low energy response enable new, detailed studies of these bursts in the soft X-ray band. In this talk I will present some of the early results from the first nine months of the NICER mission and will report on the progress being made by the NICER team in measuring the masses and radii of pulsars.
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History & Philosophy of Science & Medicine
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History & Philosophy of Science & Medicine
Jonathan Birch, London School of Economics and Political Science, TBA
Life Sciences Building, Room 310 |
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Spector Prize Seminar
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PMB Lunch Seminar Series
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PMB Lunch Seminar Series
Natasha Bilkey, Kiona Elliott, and Ryan Emenecker
Life Sciences Building, Room 311 |
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