Members of the Physics department are assembling a diverse group of people who are interested in cutting edge research at the intersection of radio astronomy and gravitational wave physics. Participants include faculty members, post-docs, and students at the graduate, undergraduate, high school, and junior high levels, teachers, and UWM staff.
Our participants work closely with a similar group of students and teachers from the University of Texas, Brownsville (UTB), where the idea of the Arecibo Remote Command Center (ARCC) was first developed. Xavier Siemens (faculty), Jessica Clayton and Larry Price (post-docs), Melissa Anholm (graduate student) and Jean Creighton (planetarium director) are leading the ARCC@UWM effort.
Our 20 participants are primarily working on two research activities: using the Arecibo radio telescope to search for new pulsars, and analyzing the data collected during these observing sessions. In the observing sessions, we take remote control over the world’s largest radio telescope right from our physics building. We work in connection with the operators at Arecibo and the University of Texas Brownsville via video teleconferencing during our joint observation sessions, and we have learned a great deal from this collaboration.
We are also very excited to be implementing more specialized projects, such as developing the data analysis pipeline so that the data we receive is more pertinent to our cause. There are some additional projects dealing with the development and implementation of gravitational wave detection methods in pulsar timing as well.
Meetings take place every Monday night in the Physics building; these meetings usually start with a brief (roughly thirty minutes) talk by one of our participants or a guest speaker on relevant and intriguing subjects that may be applicable to the research that is taking place. Some such topics are pulsars, stellar evolution, cosmology, relativity, and gravitational waves. Typically after the talk a heated discussion of the topic at hand ensues, and we may then digress to news about pertinent developments in our research.
The ARCC program at UWM is an exciting opportunity for UWM and its students and teachers to develop a more intimate connection with the Milwaukee community by encouraging the participation of local high school students and increasing public awareness of new frontiers in physics and astronomy. We hope that our enthusiastic attitude about this project will increase the number of students pursuing careers in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics in southeast Wisconsin.
