Recent content by SpiffyKavu

I don't know if it has been done before, but take a look at the event horizon telescope. It is designed to be a mm-VLBI instrument. Why are you interested in 230 GHz? It happens to be among the strongest transition lines for the carbon monoxide molecule (2nd most abundant molecule after...

Also take notice of Neptune and Uranus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus#Magnetic_field It is thought that the magnetic field is generated in a liquid layer; not the core.

I typically use ADS (google "ADS abstract service"). You can use the search function, but if you have even an abbreviation of the journal name, use the browse function by journal/volume/page service. Citations always have at least part of the journal name, the volume, and page number. Note, I...

Golly, this thread has gone off topic. I was going to say that the Fermi telescope has good things to say about molecular hydrogen (not always well traced by CO), but I have a feeling a new topic would be better...

I can't comment on the undergraduate education at either school. I am a graduate student at the CUNY graduate center (teach at York College, research at Natural History Museum). Both programs are solid, both large programs which means there should be ample opportunity for undergraduate research...

It has been a little while since I've done research on X-ray emission from neutron stars, but a possible difference might be the timescale of the event. Flares tend to imply a brief period of enhanced X-ray emission, where an outburst does not have to mean brief (ex: superburst last for hours)...

M87 has evidence of an antipodal jet, I believe. The one-sided jet is typically explained away as a relativistic effect, due to beaming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_beaming Basically, there just isn't enough light being emitted towards us to be seen with previous...

Indeed, the emission is often seen to be conical. A helical structure is often seen on large scales, though, for example in 3C 273 and S5 0835+710: Anatomy of Helical Extragalactic Jets: The Case of S5 0836+710 I haven't sifted through too much of the literature on the structure of jets...

Speedy: time dilation in any of these systems is negligible. The core would have to approach the size of a black hole for the given mass for time dilation to have any affect, and thermal pressure will prevent that long before contraction can reach that stage. The the question of how do stars of...

fzero, I like your explanations here, but I must point out that the Kruskal-Szekeres coordinate chart is not geodesically complete, but rather maximally extended. There is still the past and future singularities where geodesics can end, though there do exist geodesics which are themselves...

Asteroseismology is one way, especially with magnetars. Magnetars can flare up in high energy emission. These guys are called anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft-gamma repeaters. This emission is thought to originate from star quakes: the magnetic field is so strong that twists and torques in the...

It is indeed interesting. Beyond the neutron drip density, neutrons tend to clump together. This is analogous to the reason why a water drop likes forming a sphere. So we get bubbles of neutrons floating in otherwise neutron-rich nuclei. As we go deeper we encounter other phases, what are...

http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.3544 This study was published in Nature earlier this year. They looked towards the galactic center and studied microlensing events. Visual studies of the area seem to suggest that many of the ~Jupiter mass objects spotted are not bound to any object.

I got a draft version sent to me by Pullin, and even in the early stages, it was quite good. One complaint I had is that there were only three or four exercises per chapter. I think undergraduates would be able to get more out of it if they could get their hands dirty more often and calculate a...

I think I can elaborate on what twofish said, the content of this information is the questions we can ask particles. What is the position of the particle? Momentum? Does it have spin? Electric charge? It is the answers to similar types of questions that people worry about when black holes...