Now showing items 61-71 of 71

• #### Super-Earth and Sub-Neptune Exoplanets: a First Look from the MEarth Project ﻿

(2013-10-08)
Exoplanets that transit nearby M dwarfs allow us to measure the sizes, masses, and atmospheric properties of distant worlds. Between 2008 and 2013, we searched for such planets with the MEarth Project, a photometric survey ...
• #### The Atmosphere-Interior Connection: Rocky Planets as Linked Chemical Systems ﻿

(2016-12-01)
The goal of near-term exoplanet observations is to identify and characterize the atmospheres of habitable rocky planets. Solar System studies have taught us that rocky planets undergo differentiation into three different ...
• #### The Coevolution of Galaxies and Their Environments ﻿

(2017-05-15)
The circumgalactic medium (CGM), or halo gas", represents a major component of the baryon cycle of galaxies—-a component which remains poorly understood. Galaxies grow by accreting from this reservoir, and also return ...
• #### The Life and Death of Interstellar Turbulence: The Intriguing Case of Ophiuchus ﻿

(2018-05-16)
In this thesis, I present the identification and analyses of a population of coherent structures in nearby molecular clouds, L1688 in Ophiuchus and B18 in Taurus. The newly discovered coherent structures have a typical ...
• #### The Past, Present, and Future of Planetary Systems ﻿

(2017-05-10)
Studying exoplanets which transit their host stars is a fruitful approach to developing a detailed understanding of their planetary systems. In this thesis, we develop data analysis methods and techniques to study transiting ...
• #### The Physical Nature of the Giant Molecular Cloud Population in NGC 300 ﻿

(2018-01-23)
Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs) are the cradles of stellar birth across the Universe, and thus understanding their properties and evolution is central to addressing questions in astrophysics at a wide range of scales from ...
• #### The Resolved Spatial Distribution of Solids in Protoplanetary Disks ﻿

(2018-05-14)
Observations of protoplanetary disks provide key constraints on theories of planet formation. The fundamental challenge for planet formation theory is the timescale for the formation of planetesimals. Theory predicts that ...
• #### The UV Environment for Prebiotic Chemistry: Connecting Origin-of-Life Scenarios to Planetary Environments ﻿

(2017-04-17)
Recent laboratory studies of prebiotic chemistry (chemistry relevant to the origin of life) are revolutionizing our understanding of the origin of life (abiogenesis) on Earth just as telescopes capable of searching for ...
• #### Tidal Disruption of Stars by Supermassive Black Holes ﻿

(2013-09-16)
This thesis presents theoretical results on the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The multiwavelength ares produced by tidal disruption events (TDEs) have supernova-like luminosities, and ...
• #### Unraveling the History of the Milky Way ﻿

(2017-01-12)
Understanding physical processes responsible for the formation and evolution of galaxies like the Milky Way is a fundamental problem in astrophysics. However, a key challenge is that the properties and orbits of the stars ...
• #### Unveiling the Progenitors of Short-duration Gamma-ray Bursts ﻿

(2014-06-06)
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are relativistic explosions which originate at cosmological distances, and are among the most luminous transients in the universe. Following the prompt gamma-ray emission, a fading synchrotron ...