PHYS313 - Supplemental Material

This page contains recent articles in journals and the general press that are relevant for our course!

Just in case you wondering: Yes, ignorance about the universe can kill you! And read this article about one of your own (former) peers.
Here are more ways the Universe can kill us all - with a game to play it out! Or maybe you would like to learn about Astrophysics while cooking?

The Sun, Star Formation and Star Evolution

Photons in the Sun not only provide pressure - they are even slowing down its rotation!
Multistar system in the making
Neutrinos from the sun
Dust clouds
Icy cold planet-forming disk
Chaotic early stages
Not only galaxies can have spiral arms!

Giants and Supernovae

A whole bunch of giants - at the Eddington luminosity limit, no less!
Radioactivity in Supernova
The role of neutrinos
Supernova 1987a - 30 years after
How Supernovae produce the raw material for planets
Could they be powered by dark matter?
The most gigantonormous supernova ever?
Or perhaps it WASN'T a supernova after all!

White Dwarfs, Neutron Stars and Black Holes

Two white dwarfs on collision course
A weird little dwarf - with a pure oxygen atmosphere!
The strange "mantle" of neutron stars
The core of neutron stars
Binary pulsars - note the very nice video showing the "lighthouse effect" and how it can disappear in a binary due to General Relativity!
Can Gravity Waves help us figure out Neutron Stars?
A primer on black holes
Orphan black hole
Spinning black holes
One of the most monstrous black hole yet - note the (implicit) reference to the Eddington limit on luminosity
...or maybe this one is even bigger? Surprisingly, it's not in a dense neighborhood (Thanks to D. Ens)
The black hole from the movie "Interstellar" and the inner workings of the rendering (Thanks to M. Hines)
Looking for a picture like that at the center of our own galaxy

Isn't general relativity amazing? And here another gravitational lens
But is it true? (Gravitational Waves) (Dropping Things)
How to make gravitational waves - and have we seen them already? (Hint: The answer is "YES" - see at the bottom of this page)

Elementary Particles, Dark Matter and Cosmic Rays

Nice interactive intro to Particle Physics
A movie intro to the LHC at CERN/Switzerland
How many parameters does the standard model need to describe "everything"?
A nice new cosmic ray detector
...and here is another new one
A new way to look for high-energy cosmic rays
Could a Gamma Ray Burst kill us all?
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer

...and here is an explanation where the positrons it sees might be coming from

Icecube neutrino detector (see also this presentation and this website - note the description of a Cosmic Ray app!)
More on Icecube
Cosmic rays from a supernova
Dark Matter in the Sun? - ...or maybe even on Earth?
Direct signals from dark matter?
A short movie primer on dark matter
Supersymmetry
New ideas about dark matter
Could dark matter be made of black holes?
More corroboration of dark matter
...but we just can't seem to detect it directly! (See also here)
More ideas about dark matter detection here
and here
Can we find Gravitons?

Galaxies

A new view of the Milky way
How big is the Milky Way? And how much does it weigh?
...and how tiny are its companions?
Milky Way's BIG Neighbor
...and a bunch of galaxies that our Milky Way kept hidden from us!
... But: could Nearby Dwarf Galaxy be a Dark Matter Factory? Or maybe not?
The oldest stars in the Milky Way
A gigantic gas cloud on collision course
...and even more crazy stuff: "Space Noodles"and the BIG X at the center of the Milky Way
Supermassive Black holes - a presentation at the 2017 APS "April" meeting
Milky Way's Monster Black Hole filmed burping - and more X-ray pictures
Even more about the Black Hole
More than one black hole?
The Event Horizon Project
...and other (even more monstrous) black holes - burping as well
You can even watch one eating
Binary black holes seem to be a common occurence
News about Blazars
How did supermassive black holes begin?
Another collection of supermassive black holes - can you find the nonsensical statement in this article?

Aren't Spiral's supposed to be smaller than Ellipticals?
From Spiral to Elliptical
A galaxy loosing its gas
What exactly is a megamaser galaxy???
Colliding galaxy clusters and dark matter
Measuring dark matter halos with the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
Dark Matter in Galaxy Clusters
Maybe there wasn't as much dark matter in early galaxies?
When did the "dark ages" end? Another view from Hubble
Star formation in a young galaxy far, far away...
More on the "re-ionization epoch"
Old Clouds with tiny traces of heavy elements
Lots of baby galaxies
The furthest-away (and oldest) galaxy
How big can early galaxies possibly be?
Green clouds lit up by quasars
One blogger's comments on galaxy formation
Gravitational lensing of a distant galaxy
Another example, from the millimeter radio telescope "ALMA" in Chile

The Universe

Big Bang Cosmology

About the newest window on the Universe: Gravitational Waves

The best video explanation yet - cudos to Stephen Colbert and Brian Greene! (Our department will be setting up a similar "toy LIGO" for the Physics Open House this Saturday - come check it out!)
Some history on Gravitational Waves
Some other simple explanations : here and here and here
Was that clear enough?
The original paper - sure to become a classic
Coverage from the New York Times - including a short movie and the sound clip that went around the world
Reaction from Lawrence Krauss (who may have leaked the discovery before the official announcement)
Was there a flash before the thunder?
And the future (LISA) is already nearly here!