Colloquia November 8

On November 8, 2012 the University of Michigan welcomed back a former graduate student Zhaohuan Zhu. 

Zhaohuan Zhu was a graduate student at the University of Michigan some years ago. He now students at Princeton.

Zhu focused of the fluid dynamics of planetary system formations. He described why he believed it was better to used 3D over 2D simulations. He said it was better because we could see more data about the way a planetary system works.

He went into great detail about how planets form. He talked about using radio velocities techniques (measuring the wobble of the planet) and imaging (viewing the planet head on).

Zhu also showed a very interesting video about the Almer telescope and its array formation. It is composed of many radio telescopes to give astronomers a deeper clearer view of the universe.With the Almer telescope astronomers will be able to view deeper into space as far back as many radio waves, and since they are in an array they are not limited by the viewing power of the telescope itself. They are all put together as one so essentially the viewing power is only limited by the amount of telescopes in the array.