Lowell Boone, visiting assistant professor of physics at The College of Wooster, will close out the Faculty at Large spring lecture series with “Heaven & Earth: Participating in the Cosmic Process” on Tuesday, April 25, at 11 a.m. in Room 009 of Severance (Chemistry) Hall (943 College Mall). Admission is free and open to the public.
Boone’s talk will focus on the incredibly energetic outflows of material called “jets.” These structures can be found in newly forming stars and in the intense environments of stellar corpses, such as neutron stars and black holes. They are even found at the centers of galaxies, emanating from super-massive black holes a million to a billion times the mass of our Sun. Jets can contain relativistic particles with velocities approaching the speed of light. Such extreme environments can produce copious amounts of radiation over more than 10 orders of magnitude in energy: extending from the radio waves, through visible light, and even into X-rays and Gamma rays.
“The universe is a vast place - so much so that at times we may feel utterly cut off and alone,” said Boone. “But we are not alone in the universe: light travels from every corner of the sky to bring us news of all manner of events and structures, including the life and times of these beautiful and powerful structures called jets. We need only open our eyes and learn to interpret the message to be inexorably caught up in the cosmic process.”
Boone, who joined Wooster’s faculty in 2003, earned his B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Cruz. A member of the American Astronomical Society, Boone’s previous work includes the commissioning and operation of STACEE (the Solar Tower Atmospheric Cherenkov Effect Experiment), an emerging type of ground-based detector. He is particularly interested in using gamma-ray and X-ray astronomy to study the structure and energetics of active galactic nuclei, as well as how these objects can illuminate the composition of the intergalactic infrared photon field, an avenue of inquiry which may be used to learn about galaxy formation in the early universe. The results of Boone’s research has been published in a variety of scholarly journals.