Journal Club
The club occurs on Thursdays at 3.30pm in the Management Building meeting room (venue subject to change, details will appear here). The format of the club is to spend the first 20 minutes reviewing the previous days seminar, then spend the other 40 minutes reviewing papers (approximately 4 papers at 10 minutes each).
Please feel free to browse Astro-ph and bring along a paper with you.
18.09.08
Seminar:This week there was no seminar to review.
Papers:
Paper 1: Velocity dispersions in a cluster of stars: How fast could Usain Bolt have run? brought forward by Simon Reynolds. Figure one was examined as the question "Why did Thompson slow down at the end?"was raised, then figure 4 showing where Bolt would have finished was also examined.
Paper 2: Inelastic Dark Matter in Light of DAMA/LIBRA brought forward by Brendan Jackson. The DARMA group have an 8-sigma detection of a signal with yearly modulation consistent with the earth/sun moving through a DM halo. This result has been ruled out by other detectors for WIMPs in the DARMA mass range. This paper proposes a theory which would allow the DARMA result by allowing WIMPs to have an excited state so favouring the NaI detector used by DARMA.
Paper 3: The Aquarius Project: the subhalos of galactic halos brought forward by Peder Norberg. Aquarius has resimulated MW-like halos at very high resolution. They aren't resimulations of Milllenium halos but they do have the same cosmology. Table 3, figure 2, figures 4, 13 and 16 were looked at in more detail
Paper 4: The Cepheid Galactic Internet brought forward by Duncan Forgan. The idea of the paper is that a means of communication could be to modulate the periodic signal of Cepheids. This is apparently possible using neutrino beams. Maybe someone out there is doing this right now...
We ran out of time for:
A blueprint for detecting supersymmetric dark matter in the Galactic halo brought along by Peder Norberg
Pamela paper re DARMA paper - brought along by Hannah Parkinson
23.09.08
Seminar:
Lynne Jones, University of Washington: "High-redshift clusters in the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey"
Yesterday's seminar was reviewed by Peder Norberg. He gave a summery of the topics covered in the seminar, which was followed by discussion on the filters used and other technical aspects and requirements of the project.Papers:
Paper 1: New Ice Core Evidence for a Volcanic Cause of the A.D. 536 Dust Veil brought forward by Emma Rigby. Emma gave an overview of the research. In AD 536 the Earth became very cold, which could be either due to a volcano eruption or a possibly a comet hitting the Earth. She explained figure one showing the decrease in Global temperature.
Paper 2: Planet Migration through a Self-Gravitating Planetesimal Disk brought forward by Duncan Forgan. Duncan gave a brief explanation of the paper including a description of the migration rates. Figure one was looked at in more detail with explanations of key features given.
02.10.08
Seminar:
Jay Gallagher, University of Wisconsin: "Starbursts, Interactions, and Connections to the IGM: An M82 Case Study"
Mass outflow properties were discussed showing the two modes of mass loading (cool injection) and entrainment (bulk). Also, the optimum range for mass to leave the system by starbust feedback. It was mentioned that bursts can affect the position in red/blue sequence.Papers:
Paper 1: Discovery of an Unusual Optical Transient with the Hubble Space Telescope brought forward by Wing-Fai Thi. The symmetric (~100 days either side) lightcurve was discusssed.
Paper 2: Consistently Large Cosmic Flows on Scales of 100 Mpc/h: a Challenge for the Standard LCDM Cosmology brought forward by Hannah Parkinson. The fact that bulk flow appears to be larger than lambda-CDM predicts was the main topic of conversation.
Paper 3: RAVE- First Results and Second Data Release brought forward by Peder Norberg. Discussion revolved around the differences between thick and thin discs.
09.10.08
Seminar:
There was no seminar this week due to the ROE workshop, Habitibility in the Galaxy.
Papers:
16.10.08
Seminar:
Alan Boss, Carnegie Institution of Washington: "Giant Planet Formation: Theory vs. Observations"
Papers:
Paper 1: The zCOSMOS redshift survey: the three-dimensional classification cube and bimodality in galaxy physical properties brought forward by Hannah Parkinson
Paper 2: A New Method for Estimating Dark Matter Halo Masses using Globular Cluster Systems brought forward by Peder Norberg
Paper 3: A Numerical Testbed for Hypotheses of Extraterrestrial Life and Intelligence brought forward by Duncan Forgan
23.10.08
Seminar:
Dean McLaughlin, Keele University: "Dynamical evolution of the mass function of globular star clusters"
Papers:
30.10.08
Seminar:
Zoe Leinhardt, University of Cambridge: "Planetesimals, Collisions, and Planet Formation"
Papers:
06.11.08
Seminar:
Karina Caputi, ETH Zurich: "The infrared Universe up to z~3: recent results from Spitzer and prospects for Herschel and ALMA"
Papers:
Paper 1: Cosmological electromagnetic fields and dark energy brought forward by David Sobral. We looked at this paper from the aspesct of 'would this actually work?' as different theories are always being published.
Paper 2: Building synthetic galaxy catalogues: a first look at the photometric redshift performance of Pan-STARRS brought forward by Peder Norberg Peder Norberg. After a quick overview of Pan-STARRS we looked at figures 1,3,4,5,7 and 10 in more details with explanations.
13.11.08
Seminar:
Joanna Dunkley, University of Oxford: "The polarized CMB: WMAP and beyond", Reviewed By Henry Pearce
Paper 1: Five Year WMAP Observations: Likelihoods and Parameters from the WMAP Data
Paper 2: Halo Occupation Distribution Modelling of Clustering of Luminous Red Galaxies
Paper 3: The Effective Theory of Quintessence: the w < -1 side revealed
Paper 4: Acoustic Noise in Deep Ice and Environmental Conditions at the South Pole
************************************************************************************************Thank you to Eric Tittley for helping us set up this page.