Smashed windshields, Millenium Falcons, microwaved light bulbs, canyon-jumping good times.

The past few weeks have been full of ups and downs.

Let’s start with a downer. I walked out to my car a couple mornings ago to find the rear windshield smashed out by a rock, which was still lying serenely in the backseat. My innocent blue Chevy was sitting amid a sea of vehicles in a campus parking lot, yet mine was the only one targeted. Luckily, this is Arizona, so I didn’t really need to worry about rain for a while before I could get the windshield replaced (at a cost of $230). I never really expected Flagstaff to be a dangerous place, even after getting my windshield smashed out, but just today one of my housemates was biking along a trail winding through the southern part of the Northern Arizona University campus when he came across a couple doo-ragged guys beating the crap out of each other in broad daylight. Maybe they were just practicing?

On the upside, I had my first real mountain biking experience last weekend. A couple friends and I biked 24 miles from campus to the top of a mountain looming 2,500 feet over Flagstaff and back. The mountain has a couple of peaks, all of which have a huge array of antennas and a watchtower on top. We played leapfrog with a more experienced mountain biker as we took a windy, switchbacky, pot-holed service road up the mountain. We asked him to recommend us another trail to get back down, and he pulled out a map and pointed. “You guys want just a little technical? A little taste of downhill? Then this is the trail you want.” The trail was rated one X (on a scale from one to three Xs, with more Xs indicating a harder trail), but looking back I think the Xs may have actually been skull and crossbones. I asked what trail he was taking back down. “Oh, my trail isn’t even on the map,” he said. This guy totally overestimated our skill level – the trail was deceptively easy while it was level and following a ridgeback, but soon it plunged headfirst down the mountainside. The trail was littered with logs, roots, and giant rocks, not to mention it was extremely steep and narrow… if you took a rock the wrong way you’d fly off the mountain.

Every Saturday we’ve chosen a new place to explore. On the first weekend, we hiked into the bowels of a blown-apart cinder cone, then crawled into a dormant lava river tube. The next weekend, we hiked around in the Red Rocks desert around Sedona, world-renowned for its “vortexes” that emanate mystical, healing energies. This past Saturday, we went up to the Grand Canyon. We were stuck on a shuttle bus during a thunderstorm, but decided to go ahead and start hiking into the canyon anyway. We were the last ones to hit the trail before the storm, so by the time the clouds burned off an hour later, we had that much time to spend in solitude eating lunch and chilling out at the tip of a ridge jutting into the canyon. The views were absolutely stunning, 360 degrees around. The floor of the outer canyon, formed by the material eroded from the collapsing rim walls that has washed down to the river, had the color of guacamole with all of its shrubby, dusty plant life. The Colorado river itself was so deep in the inner canyon that you can’t even see it unless you hike a couple miles down from the rim.

On Sundays, one of us cooks for all the others. We’ve had steak and potatoes on the grill, fajitas/quesadillas/margaritas, and chicken puttanesca. All 12 of us astronomy interns (four REU students working at Lowell Observatory, five REU students working at NAU, two MIT students, and one student working at the Naval Observatory) have become very close in the past couple weeks. I bought a flat-screen LCD TV, so everyone gathers at our apartment to watch movies and party on the weekends. We play a sport just about every day – volleyball up at Lowell, basketball and soccer down at the NAU campus. I’ve become known for a couple moves in volleyball, including “the hammer” and jumping up in the air to spike when it’s completely unnecessary to jump at all. This kid we played volleyball with even asked if I was a martial artist because of the way I chopped and punched at the ball, then asked if I played tennis because of the way I served.

I suppose I should say a few obligatory words about my research. Last week I wrote my first program. Well, scratch that… I wrote my first program in a decade. I taught myself Java and Basic when I was 13 while I was grounded from my computer games for a month, but I haven’t programmed since. My research advisor was gone to a conference in Canada last week, so I used my down time to teach myself FORTRAN (the standard for scientific applications) and IDL (a proprietary language used extensively by astronomers for data analysis and visualization) and wrote a couple programs from scratch for my research.

One of my programs allows me to overplot contour maps of geometrically aligned images observed at different wavelengths. I’ve spent a good amount of my time exploring these images, some of which have such high resolution that we can see an incredible amount of structure in the core of the galaxies too. Some of these bright “knots” look like stars, but we can’t be absolutely sure what they are until we get spectral information in order to determine their redshift or until we correlate them with pockets of gas from 21-cm radio data. I’ve been experimenting with point-spead function (PSF) fitting in a program called IRAF in order to subtract foreground stars across the face of a galaxy in order to compute accurate surface photometry – that is, how the brightness of the galaxy changes with radius from the center – just in case we figure out if the knots are indeed foreground stars or are bright, star-forming nebulae within the galaxy.

This week, since my advisor is back from Canada, she’s teaching me how to run another data reduction program called AIPS in order to perform the monumentally challenging task of building spectra and contour maps from radio interferometric data collected with the VLA (the big antenna dishes seen in the movie Contact). Once I know more about it, I’ll give an overview of interferometry in my next update, but so far it is clear to me that radio data will provide us a huge amount of information about the star formation in our galaxies, as well as about the bulk motion and turbulence of the gas within them.

Well, I’m spent. Here’s some pictures:

My shattered rear windshield with mountains in the background.

We're chilling out eaten snacks at the top of a mountain overlooking Flagstaff.

A couple of the other students I work and live with hanging out in the Grand Canyon.

Overlooking the Grand Canyon. This is not a place for the faint of heart.

I am renowned for my floppy hat. I gave my jacket to one of the girls, so that hat was all I had to protect me from the rain.

I'm leaping like a flying squirrel into a creek at the bottom of a gorgeous canyon.

Mashing potatoes the cheap college student way... with a beer bottle.

The Millenium Falcon is airborne! (Don't worry, it's just a kite we spent an hour building.)

Sweet glowing light bulb in the microwave.

More Than a Feeling

Greetings, physics persons far and wide!

I finally make my maiden post, updating you on the wonders of physics on the east coast like no one else can! Maybe I’m promising more than I can deliver, but nonetheless, here we go:

I was awarded a position in the REU Program at Boston College, a mid-sized institution (~9,000) just outside the city of Boston that is administered by the Jesuits of the Society of Jesus. This is the second year BC (as you quickly find yourself calling it) has hosted an REU program, and they’re pretty ambitious about it. Week 1 has thus far included a rigorous battery of lectures, most of which center around condensed matter and material sciences, the specialties of the fine faculty here at BC.

It’s worth taking a moment to describe the type of department physics is here: unlike Truman, they are very much geared toward research. When I say that, I don’t mean that we don’t have opportunities or aren’t encouraged, but just that it’s not the focus. That’s hardly the case here where it IS the focus: million-dollar laboratories, government grants, grad students and post-docs, the whole nine yards. They’ve got their own faculty support staff unto themselves (no sharing those staff with Bio, even though they share the building with Biology, and no chemists to be found!), not to mention a big old office and virtually the entire basement to themselves. I’ve been assigned to work with Dr. Michael Naughton and his laboratory team.

Time and time again, I’ve been told that his is the “best” lab, which I’ve come to find means that they have the most projects and grants up in the air at one time, as well as the biggest physical space. Most Impressive Thing So Far: The 43 Tesla Pulse Magnet you have to lock in its own tiny room without any people before firing it. That’s not my project though, sadly. This begs an important question: What is my project? Truth be told, I don’t know yet. The Naughton Lab has so much going on that we decided to wait until a few more things shake out before I get assigned my work.

That mostly depends on how good the sample materials created by another BC lab pan out. A graduate student was examining them just this afternoon over at the Scanning Electron Microscope / Tunneling Electron Microscope facility across the way at BC’s other campus. I myself will be touring that facility with the REU group, and then staying behind after they leave to be “oriented” so that I can go work there if my project requires it! Security’s pretty crazy: foreign nationals aren’t even allowed in, which a priori I take a political objection to, but I’m not above being a little impressed at whatever lies within, that they feel it requires such security.

Following that, I have a meeting with my mentor (Dr. Naughton) and hopefully I’ll have more information about which project I’ll be assigned to by then. (There are a bunch, but explaining them all would be a bit of a waste, and I’d probably maul the science anyways…)

Right now I’m sitting in my little dorm [Note: I was recently corrected that 'dorm' is a pejorative term, with "residential hall" being the preferred nomenclature; ResLife people, you can deal with it. I sleep here, IT'S A DORM]. I share an apartment-kinda-thing (though it’s in a dorm-like building) with three other dudes, though the space we’re in was meant for six. So we each get our own room that was supposed to have two people in it. I’ve been told numerous times that this is “one of the best” dorms on campus. Eh? All I have to compare it to is Truman’s dorms, but I feel like they’d clean up in any such competition. BC has this weird apartment business going for it: having a full fridge and stove and living room is pretty nice… but sharing it with five other people? That’s more than I live with at Truman, and we’ve got an entire HOUSE. Also: I feel like if I took a misstep I might fall though one of my room-walls! Anyways, I don’t wanna complain. It’s a nice place to sleep, and plenty of room, I guess I just expected to be blown away since tuition is so much more expensive, and I was not.

I’ve had limited time to kick it in Boston, so far only one foray to the grocery, and another to get some Chipotle (which I do not hate nearly as much as I expected to) and then see a one-night-only presentation of Pulp Fiction at a restored movie theater, which was fantastic!

Anyway, gotta get to the bus stop at 8:30 tomorrow to get to the clean room, and I’ve caught something of a cold, so I’m gonna get some sleep. More science updates to follow, and I promise right here and right now to keep you abreast of my adventures in Boston proper.

Greetings from the Rockies!

I’m writing to you from the town of Leadville, CO where there is public WIFI access (what an awesome town!). This is my 5th day on the road and it’s been wonderful. I have 5 states worth of mud on my truck (see picture) and I refuse to wash it until I get home (with the exception of doing the windows while filling up on gas–I need to see the road!).

So far I’ve camped out in central Nebraska, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming, the Medicine Bow Mountains in southern Wyoming and the Rockies near Denver. I’m traveling in my small pickup which has a camper shell over the back that I can sleep in. As an impoverished college student, I’ve been subsisting on ham-sandwiches and ramennoodles, camping on public lands and going to state park campgrounds to shower, etc, etc. Public lands here out west are pretty nice, it’s really quiet and you can count on being undisturbed (with the exception of being woken up by a cow sniffing at the window of the truck). For the record, I did get stuck in a snowbank yesterday (it’s June). I carry appropriate tools and getting out wasn’t much hassle–it was quite fun actually.

The weather was fairly lousy the first three days and I didn’t take many pictures because most of the scenery was obscured by rain and fog. Since it’s cleared up I’ve taken more pics. Most of what I’ve posted below is from the last two days.

I have about 10 days left on the road before I have to be in Washington State doing physics. I think I’ll be heading southwest toward the Grand Canyon…

Pictures
The Big Horn Mountains in the Clouds:

Devils Tower on a rainy day:

Rain in the Great Divide Basin of Wyoming:

I camped here:

Rain west of Laramie, WY:

My truck!

Wind River Canyon, WY:

Mountains in the Wind River Range:

Astronomy: the other white meat

Well, after all this talk of neural networks and particle accelerators, I suppose it’s about time to hear from a representative from “the other white meat” of physics. I’m out here in Flagstaff, Arizona, working at the world-renowned Lowell Observatory, whose primary claims to fame are Slipher’s 1912 discovery of high-velocity redshift in the spectral lines of galaxies (which led to the realization that the universe is expanding and, hence, had a beginning), and Tombaugh’s 1930 discovery of Pluto (whose eventual demotion from planethood led to great confusion as to what exactly my very educated mother just served us).

The observatory is still an active, privately owned research institution that regularly hires a staff of summer interns, who also attend seminars at the local Northern Arizona University and live in apartments on the NAU campus. There’s a group of 12 of us from all over the country, and over the past week we’ve gotten really close already. (In fact, a couple of them just finished knocking down some beers to help dullen the pain from basketball injuries while watching Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle. I was busy writing this blog and not following the movie a single bit. Somebody will have to explain the cheetah.)

Now, a little about Flagstaff. Simply put, this town is amazing. I’ve been here a couple times ago to work on research I’ve been doing at Truman, and every time I come back I love it even more. It’s a bit smaller than Columbia, Missouri, but this isn’t your typical Arizona town in the middle of nowhere in the desert. We’re up at 7,000 feet sitting smack in the middle of gorgeous pine forest country. The state’s tallest peaks, which form the outer shell of a supervolcano that blew apart (much like Mount Saint Helens), loom over the town a couple miles to the north, and the whole county is pockmarked with cinder cones and crisscrossed with underground lava tubes.

We’re planning an expedition to the summit of the tallest peak this weekend, which is probably a stupid thing to do because we haven’t even adjusted to the thin air at 7,000 feet while climbing a flight of stairs, much less hiking up another 5,000 feet to the top of a snow-capped mountain. You can see the peaks from 100 miles in any direction, so if my theory is to be taken, the view from the summit should be incredible – on clear days I hear you can see all the way to the Grand Canyon.

The town itself has got everything you’d find in a big city – tons of great restaurants and shopping – but surprisingly it’s got to be the most bike-friendly town I’ve ever been in. Drivers actually respect your right to “share the road” instead of trying to plow you off into the shoulder. I bike a mile up a very steep hill to Lowell every morning (or at least throw it on my bike rack and drive up), then ride around some forest trails during my lunch break. The Lowell campus is absolutely beautiful, sitting on the edge of a national forest, lined with flower beds, overlooking a stunning view of the volcanic peaks and the city of Flagstaff in the valley below.

Now, let’s talk about the actual work I pretend to do: My project involves analyzing “ultra deep” (really really long-exposure) images of dwarf irregular galaxies, the small, misshapen, and extremely common galaxies that populate the universe, in order to determine the extent of star formation in their extreme outer edges. Our images were observed at several wavelengths, including near- and far-ultraviolet (using an earth-orbiting satellite), radio (using the Very Large Array in New Mexico), and several optical colors (using ground-based telescopes here in Arizona).

The different wavelengths probe the star formation history at different time periods in the past. Radio emission (from the well-known 21-cm line, which is formed when the spin of the electron in a hydrogen atom flips from parallel to antiparallel with respect to the spin of the proton, dropping the electron from one hyperfine energy level to another and thereby emitting a low-energy photon) traces the distribution of cool hydrogen gas, which is where we’ll find current star formation. Ultraviolet and H-alpha emission come from hot, massive stars that burn their fuel very quickly and thus must be very young. And finally, optical emission comes primarily from cooler stars that burn their fuel more slowly and thus were formed long ago.

Now, some basic background: Stars form when a distribution of gas (somehow) compartmentalizes into individual clouds that are (somehow) sufficiently cool and (somehow) dense enough to surrender to gravitational collapse. Any successful model of star formation must be able to explain the “somehow”s. Dwarf irregular galaxies in particular are extremely useful for testing models of star formation for several reasons: First, the gas density is already very low near the centers of these galaxies, but especially in the extreme other edges (the focus of my project). Second, irregular galaxies do not benefit from “spiral density waves,” which act as the primary catalyst for star formation in spiral galaxies. (Cool fact: The beautiful “spiral arms” you see in spiral galaxies do not rotate rigidly around the core. The arms themselves rotate independently of the stars that compose them, much like waves moving forward through a traffic jam even though the individual cars barely move at all. These so-called “spiral density waves” rotate around the core of the galaxy and trigger star formation by compressing the gas. The newly born, hot blue stars do not have enough time to migrate far enough away from the arms before they explode as supernovae or otherwise burn out as white dwarfs, which explains why the spiral arms of a galaxy are typically so bright and so blue.)

The big question that my project seeks to answer is, how are stars being formed in such low-density environments and without spiral density waves to trigger formation?