Brian Jackson
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Assistant Professor of Physics at Boise State University
Brian Jackson
2w ago
Brian Jackson
1M ago
Brian Jackson
2M ago
Artist’s conception of a hot Jupiter shedding mass.
Though worlds in our Solar System have been rocked by geological upheavals, mountain-shattering impacts, and climatic disasters throughout their histories, we think they have remained essentially intact. The planets we see today have been here since they first coalesced 4.5 billion years ago. But that long-lived stability may be the exception and not the rule. Indeed, astronomers now know many planets face destruction through what’s called tidal disruption, and recent searches have revealed direct evidence of the final moments for these doome ..read more
Brian Jackson
3M ago
Join Boise State Physics for our First Friday Astronomy lecture series in Spring 2024. Lectures take place on the first Friday of the month (EXCEPT in April of this year when it will take place on the second Friday) at 7:30p MT on-campus and via live-stream at boi.st/astrobroncoslive. Visit https://www.boisestate.edu/physics/seminars-and-events/ for more information ..read more
Brian Jackson
3M ago
Cheomseongdae, astronomical observatory in Gyeongju, South Korea. From https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2018/11/22/tech-savvy-south-korea-is-also-home-to-asias-oldest-astronomical-observatory/?sh=40c3a1b41a7f.
For Boise State Physics’ First Friday Astronomy event in January, we will host Leif Edmondson, president of the Boise Astronomical Society. Edmondson will talk about ancient Babylonian astronomy, so for this month’s blog post, rather than steal his thunder, I decided to talk about an astronomical tradition disconnected from Babylon: ancient Korean astronomy.
Korean astronomy go ..read more
Brian Jackson
4M ago
Huygens lander descending to Titan’s surface. From https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2005/11/huygens_descent_and_landing_in_2005/9836090-3-eng-GB/Huygens_descent_and_landing_in_2005_pillars.jpg.
Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, was discovered by the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens in 1655, the same year courts in Virginia first ruled slavery was legal in the American colonies. It took another 350 years before humans visited Titan upclose, leaving this, the largest moon in the Solar System, an object of wonder and speculation. But even after many years of intimat ..read more
Brian Jackson
5M ago
“Moon-forming impactor as a source of Earth’s basal mantle anomalies” – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06589-1
Animation of LLSVPs based on the clustering analysis of Cottaar & Lekic (2016). From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_low-shear-velocity_provinces.
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCDwd96kqAI ..read more