Astrophysics Seminars

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...

ABSTRACT: Many irregular astrophysical systems and phenomena are not so rare, and in fact constitute a large fraction of all astrophysical systems. I will discuss several such riregular systems, ranging from irregular moons in the Solar-system...

ABSTRACT: I will present and discuss paleoclimatic data from the past 500 million years. The data exhibits a clear periodicity which is most naturally explained by the vertical oscillations of the solar system perpendicular to the galactic plane. I...

ABSTRACT: The correlation between the masses of central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the bulge luminosity of their host galaxies ---the SMBH-bulge relation--- is seen as fundamental to understand the formation and (co-)evolution of SMBHs and...

ABSTRACT: Studies of a variety of gas dynamical problems, for example the saturation of the MRI in the inner regions of accretion disks around compact objects, or the effects of feedback from starbursts and/or AGN, require numerical algorithms...

ABSTRACT: Stellar magnetic activity leads to a variety of observable effects, from star spots that modulate the stellar brightness on the order of weeks to months, to flares, which release highly energetic radiation over the course of a few hours...