Supernovae, the Fate of the Universe, and Broadening the Perspectives of Tomorrow's Scientists

超新星、宇宙的命运以及拓宽未来科学家的视野

• 批准号: 0401479
• 负责人: Douglas Leonard
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Leonard Douglas C
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-01 至 2006-01-15
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0401479&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Supernovae; Fate; Universe; Broadening; Perspectives

Dr. Leonard is awarded an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship to carry out a program of research and education at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Leonard will pursue an integrated two-pronged research effort into the study of supernovae-the final, explosive stage in the evolution of certain types of stars. First, he will seek to verify and extend the role of distant supernovae as cosmological probes through the spectroscopic and photometric study of supernovae discovered by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy and QUEST-2 surveys. Second, he will launch an intensive supernova spectropolarimetry campaign at the Palomar 5-meter and Keck 10-meter telescopes to investigate the early-time geometry of supernovae, which is of fundamental importance to their utility as distance indicators.In addition to his research, Dr. Leonard will teach a course targeted to Caltech undergraduates entitled ''Inventing Reality: The Human Search for Truth''. While broadly related to the history of human scientific thought, a particular focus of the course will be the issue of how the questions that people have asked and how the answers that satisfy the questioners have changed over time and across cultures. This will provide Caltech undergraduates a unique opportunity to examine the foundations of the present scientific paradigm and to gain an appreciation for how other societies at different times and/or places approach(ed) the same questions that Western scientists are asking today.

伦纳德博士被授予NSF天文学和天体物理学博士后奖学金，在加州理工学院开展研究和教育计划。伦纳德博士将致力于研究超新星的综合研究工作，超新星是某些类型恒星演化的最后爆炸阶段。首先，他将通过对加拿大-法国-夏威夷望远镜遗产和QUEST-2调查发现的超新星进行光谱和光度研究，寻求验证和扩大遥远超新星作为宇宙学探测器的作用。其次，他将在帕洛玛5米和凯克10米望远镜上开展一项密集的超新星分光偏振测量活动，以调查超新星的早期几何形状，这对它们作为距离指标的实用性至关重要。除了他的研究，伦纳德博士还将教授一门针对加州理工学院本科生的课程，名为“发明现实：人类对真理的探索”。虽然与人类科学思想史广泛相关，但本课程的一个特别重点是人们提出的问题以及满足提问者的答案如何随着时间和文化的变化而变化。这将为加州理工学院的本科生提供一个独特的机会，以检查目前的科学范式的基础，并获得在不同的时间和/或地点的其他社会如何处理（艾德）今天西方科学家提出的同样的问题的赞赏。