Tuesday, September 30th, Phys/Astro alum Joe Swiggum ’10 will be on campus to give a talk. He will present during common time (12:00-1:00 pm) in place of Physics Table for the week. The talk will happen in Olin 04. Please join us!
Abstract
In the summer of 2007, the 100-m Green Bank Telescope (GBT) was undergoing track replacement and remained stationary for several months. The 350-MHz GBT Drift Scan survey took advantage of this down time, collecting data and searching for radio pulsars as the sky drifted overhead. About 20% of the 1,500 hours of data collected were allocated for the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) — an outreach program that aims to interest high school students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) related career paths by involving students in cutting-edge pulsar research and data analysis. So far, the program has involved more than 2,500 students from 18 states, who have discovered 7 new pulsars and re-detected ~75. The discoveries include several interesting sources: a nearby millisecond pulsar, a disrupted recycled pulsar with a spin period of 33-ms, a 4.8-s pulsar that nulls 75% of the time and most recently, a 185-ms pulsar in the widest-known double neutron star system. Over 75 high school students have been included as co-authors on the first two publications describing their discoveries.