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& Astronomy 2002 Newsletter Back to Front Page INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
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Alumni News
1990sJacob Willig-Onwuachi (MS 1997) is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Jacob finished his PhD degree in physics at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH in May 2001, with a specialty in MRI hardware design/computational physics. Xin Li (MS 1992) is a Lead Engineer at Ciena in Cupertino, CA. 1980sGregory Anderson (BS 1985) is Assistant Professor of Physics at Northwestern University. Gregory has also held Research Associate positions at Ohio State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Kavita Philip (MS 1989) received her PhD degree (1996) in science and technology studies at Cornell University, and is currently an Assistant Professor of science, technology and culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. David Suszcynsky (PhD 1989) is a Technical Staff Member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Brian Tierney (BA 1985) is a Scientist at CERN. Craig Tindall (BS 1984) is a Materials Scientist with the Semiconductor Detector Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he performs research and development of silicon solid-state radiation detectors. 1960sRuth Bernstein (BA 1963) is retired and currently resides in Marion, IA. John Freeman (PhD 1963) is Professor Emeritus and Research Professor at Rice University in Houston, TX. He recently published "Storms in Space," a book about space physics for general audiences (Publisher: Cambridge University Press, ISBN no. 0-521-66038-6). M. Wayne Greene (PhD 1968) is Director, Dept. Health, Safety and Environment, University of British Columbia. In addition to being the Director of HSE, Wayne is the Director and Adjunct Professor of the Disaster Preparedness Resources Centre in the UBC Centre for Human Settlements. He is a founding member of the Canadian Radiation Protection Association and Director (1979), and was later President (1985) and received the "Founder's Award' in 1994. He is also a founding member and Chair of the Executive Committee for the annual Emergency Preparedness Conference (1986). Wayne hosted the 5th Asia Pacific Conference on Disaster Medicine, 35 countries represented (2000). Outcome was an Action Plan for disaster management and disaster medicine. He hosted the 2nd International Workshop on Non-Ionizing Radiation and edited text on the subject (1992). Joseph Stoltzfus (PhD 1961) resides in Salem, OR. 1950sAndrew Lenard (PhD 1953) is retired from Indiana University where he was a professor (1966-1993) teaching theoretical physics graduate courses as well as undergraduate mathematics. DeathsEdnah IllsleyJames Joseph Philip Shapiro |
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The twin Voyager spacecraft were launched 25 years ago on 20 August and 5 September 1977. Both spacecraft carry plasma wave receivers designed and built in the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy under the direction of Prof. Donald Gurnett. These instruments provided the first observations of plasma waves in the magnetospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Voyager 1 observations of whistlers at Jupiter provided definitive evidence of lightning in Jupiter's atmosphere.
Both Voyagers continue to return data from their fields and particles instruments on a nearly daily basis. Voyager 1 is currently beyond 85 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun and is the most distant man-made object. It continues on a path leaving the solar system at a rate of 3.6 AU/year. Voyager 2 is on a somewhat slower trajectory, but is nearly 68 AU from the Sun. Prof. Gurnett and Bill Kurth are monitoring the wave observations for evidence of the termination shock, where the solar wind becomes subsonic, and radio emissions generated near the heliopause, which is thought to be as far as 160 AU from the Sun. Voyager 1 could cross the termination shock within the next 3 to 5 years. The instruments continue to detect interstellar dust, the only such measurements beyond the orbit of Saturn. The radioisotope thermoelectric generators on the two Voyagers are expected to continue to power the fields and particles instruments until about the year 2020. It is possible Voyager 1 will cross the heliopause by that time and provide the first observations of interstellar space.