Beginning in the late-nineteenth century, several dialogues emerged concerning life on Mars. Some supported the notion of an inhabited Mars, citing recent observations of the planet, while others, pointing to a lack of concrete evidence, denied the validity of such a bold hypothesis. The dialogues within and between different...
The education (particularly graduate education) of Americans
who were active in astronomical research between 1876 and 1941
is assessed for its effectiveness in preparing the astronomers for
careers in research. This period contains three dynamic changes:
the growth of American astronomy in becoming the world's leading
community of astronomers, the...
From the earliest English colonization to the present day, there
has been interest in astronomy in this country. The purpose of this
thesis is to show how the science of astronomy developed in America
from the earliest observations by educated colonists using imported
instruments and publishing in European journals, to...
A spectral fitting routine was developed to analyze X-ray emissions in neutron capture decay
processes that produce ¹⁹⁷Hg and ¹⁹⁷Pt. Through correcting for X-ray emissions, the
77.3 keV γ gamma ray intensities were analyzed. The thermal cross sections for the production of
¹⁹⁷Hg and ¹⁹⁷Pt were found to be 2088...
We present an analysis of the relationship between spectral lag and luminosity in time-resolved segments of long gamma-ray bursts detected by BATSE, an experiment aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite. For full bursts, there is a well-established correlation between the lag, which is easily computed, and the total burst...
In this dissertation, I describe spectroscopic studies of jet-cooled polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and one nitrogen substituted PAH (PANH) using pulsed field zero kinetic energy (ZEKE) photoelectron spectroscopy and resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectroscopy. Recently, there has been a demand for far-infrared (FIR) spectral information of astrophysically relevant molecules...
The discovery of GW170817 provided the first empirical evidence that merging binary neutron star systems are both progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts, as well as the primary sites of the nucleosynthetic rapid-neutron capture process. Initially detected as gravitational wave (GW) and gamma-ray burst (GRB) triggers, GW170817 was well-localized and follow-up...
Gamma ray bursts are some of the brightest events in the entire observable universe. Since the late 1960’s, thousands of gamma ray bursts have been observed and they have been researched extensively. However, there are still many mysteries which remain unsolved. One such mystery is whether or not the viewing...