Astrophysics Seminars

ABSTRACT: The two-player iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game has been used for 30 years to model evolution, especially the emergence of cooperation. But it still holds surprises, even in the simplest case where the game can be modeled as two simple...

Infrared spectroscopic observations of the stretching and bending modes of aliphatic and aromatic compounds are now seen throughout the Universe, from the diffuse interstellar medium of the Milky Way Galaxy to distant galaxies. Observations of...

ABSTRACT: Extrasolar moons may be frequent, temperate abodes for life and their detection would not only have astrobiological significance but would also greatly further our understanding of planet/moon formation theories. For the first time, the...

The recent claims of a gamma-ray line in the Galactic center at 130 GeV has generated excitement, not least because it could be a signal of dark matter annihilation. I will summarize the current state of the observations of the Galactic center...

Climate change is here and may become catastrophic before the end of the century if we do not transition away from the burning fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy. In this talk we focus on the work of our research team in the thermal...

Approximately a dozen luminous flares located at the centers of their host galaxies have been associated with the tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole. Analytical models of tides make one of two assumptions to make the problem...

Standard accretion disk models fold the physics of magnetic fields and turbulence into a constant viscosity parameter, alpha. Applications such as black hole spin measurements can be sensitive to the details of magnetic fields and turbulence, so...