Research
News Highlight: Simulations of Early Binary Star Systems
Numerical simulations by professor Brian O’Shea and colleagues have shown that binary star systems are possible among the first generation of stars formed in the universe. These simulations are the first to show this effect. The two yellow blobs in the simulation image to the left eventually become the two stars in the binary star system. The results were reported in the July 31, 2009 issue of the journal Science.
Stellar Astrophysics
Research on stars at MSU focuses on variable stars (Smith), neutron stars (Brown), metal-poor stars (Beers), ionization nebulae (Baldwin, Loh), exploding stars (Brown, Chomiuk), solar convection (Stein), and nuclear astrophysics (Brown, Chomiuk). Michigan State also studies nuclear processes of interest to astronomy as a member of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics and searches for metal-poor stars with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Cosmology
Research into cosmology at MSU includes studies of galaxy clusters that probe how the evolution of the cluster population reflects the properties of dark matter and dark energy (Donahue, Voit), observations of distant quasars (Baldwin), investigations of the universe’s first stars (Beers, O’Shea), and the uses of galaxy counts and distant supernovae to measure the geometry and expansion rate of the universe (Loh).
Galaxies
Studies of galaxies at MSU include investigations of how the abundance patterns among stars reflect the chemical evolution of the Milky Way (Beers, Smith), how extragalactic globular clusters trace the history of star formation in other galaxies (Strader, Zepf), and the impact of supernovae and supermassive black holes on the evolution of the brightest galaxies in galaxy clusters (Donahue, O’Shea, Voit). Galaxy studies at MSU frequently make use of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
