Astrophysics & Planetary Sciences Colloquium

Coffee and cookies 11:45AM in the APS Office.

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Abstract: Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries are extremely powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) at ~ nanoHertz to milliHertz frequencies. They are likely candidates to explain the evidence for a nanoHertz GW background recently presented by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs).

Abstract: More than one hundred years ago, exploration of the Earth's polar regions reached a fever pitch. Competition for the South Pole ultimately led to scientific discoveries whose legacy persists to the present day. Similarly, the poles of the Moon have become a new frontier for science and exploration. Perennial shadows in near-polar craters -- many of them named for famous Antarctic explorers -- remain cold enough, < 100 K, to trap water and other volatiles for billions of years. Where might these volatiles come from?

Abstract: Brown dwarfs and directly imaged self-luminous exoplanets are interesting and complex worlds that form a critical stepping stone along the path to imaging Earth-like planets. By examining their atmospheres in detail we can better understand their thermal profiles, chemical composition, and cloud properties that are tightly coupled with their formation and evolution. In this talk, I will explain how I use atmospheric retrievals, a powerful inverse modeling technique, to examine the atmospheres of brown dwarfs.

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JWST is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and is 100 times more powerful. It is 7 tons of fragile hardware operating in the Near and Mid Infrared wavelengths. The amazing images of our universe captured by JWST required many engineering feats. In her talk, Ms. Simmons describes several engineering extremes and the science that drove them.