Kip Thorne – Biography

                Kip Stephen Thorn, a renowned American theoretical physicist was born in Logan, Utah in 1940. From his early life, he had exposure to the magnificent world of science which later on, he himself would be an influence in. He obtained his higher education at both Caltech and Princeton University for his BS and PhD, respectively. After doing so, he dedicated his time completing research and becoming a professor at Caltech. His subject area is theoretical physics. As professor since 1970, Thorne has advised and served as a mentor for over 50 physicists who have received their PhD under Thorne. Thorne’s research alone and with his students is focused around gravitation physics and astrophysics, especially with concentration on relativistic stars, black holes, and gravitational waves. With his own work alongside the work of students like Carlton Caves, Anna Zytkow, and James Hartle, Thorne has posed some important questions and research in recent times. This includes: Is there a dark side of the universe populated by objects as black holes?, Can we observe the birth of the universe?, and will 21^st century technology reveal quantum behavior in the realm of human-size objects?

                With those questions in mind, Thorne has dedicated his research to physics and has contributed to the science community with his extensive work with general relativity. However, he is best known to the general public for his theory that wormholes can be used for time travel. He was one of the first people to conduct scientific research on whether space and time can be multiplied and connected, thus can time travel be possible through wormholes. Thorne’s research on this indicated that simple masses passing through traversable wormholes could never engender paradoxes. Some of Thorne’s other research dealt with tools for visualizing space-time curvature, in relation to black holes causing so. Thorne’s work with black holes extends to his Hoop Conjecture which describes that an imploding star turns into a black hole when the circumference of the designed hoops can be placed around the star and set into rotation.

                Thorne has won many honoring awards for his achievements and contributions to the science community such as awards by the country’s most prestigious universities, the Lilenfeld Prize, the Albert Einstein Medal, th e UNESCO gold medal, and on NASA’s science board. He currently is not retired from research nor from the science community but now dedicates his time in possibly producing science fiction movies with famous figures like Stephen Spielberg. He hopes to develop and possibly direct his own released film in the near future. Thorne also enjoys writing in his spare time.

APOD 4.7

The APOD I chose for this week depicts both the Milky Way Galaxy and cosmic dust from the Comet Halley. The image depicts the annual meteor shower known as Eta Aquarids, that is why both the milky way and the comet is depicted. During this shower, meteors move incredibly quick and enter the atmosphere at about 66 km/second. I chose this APOD because it included the Milky Way in its title and we had just learned about it in class. However, I also learned about the annual meteor shower and look forward to the next one I can gaze at. 

APOD 4.6

The APOD for the date of May 1st is titled, "Brisbane Sunset Moonset". The majestic photograph was taken in the southeastern corner of Australia: Brisbane. The photograph shows the beautiful relationship as the sun and new moon set together on April 29, creating a sort of  partial solar eclipse. These rarities of nature have been posted on the APOD's archive before like this one from April 30th:

In order to capture such event, the image was taken from a stack of images taken 5 minutes apart in length with telephoto lens and a solar filter. The reason I chose this image was because after reading the description, I began  thinking of the time and effort put into producing these images. I have mild experience with the images I process from the micro-observatory satellite images and it gives me a good insight into how one can produce such wonderful photographs taken from nature.