{"id":16432,"date":"2013-10-03T20:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T01:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=16432"},"modified":"2013-10-03T15:45:59","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T20:45:59","slug":"apsu-students-earn-high-marks-for-research-at-famed-fermilab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2013\/10\/03\/apsu-students-earn-high-marks-for-research-at-famed-fermilab\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU Students earn high marks for research at famed Fermilab"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Mees Fix, an Austin Peay State University physics student, thought he might be in trouble. He was outside of Chicago, analyzing white dwarf stars at Fermilab \u2013 the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s national laboratory \u2013 when he noticed something strange. One of the stars was giving off way too much light energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I thought I broke something,\u201d he said. \u201cI figured I messed something up. I walked over to Dr. Smith and said, \u2018check this out? What\u2019s going on here?\u2019\u201dDr. Allyn Smith, APSU professor of physics and astronomy, was at the lab \u2013 as he is most summers \u2013 as a visiting professor. He called over his Fermilab colleagues and APSU physics student Samuel Wyatt, who was also conducting summer research at the famed laboratory, to look at what Fix had found. They soon realized he\u2019d identified a cataclysmic variable star.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s either a classic cataclysmic variable or a Nova-like cataclysmic variable,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBoth are interesting. With the Nova-like ones, we could get a huge flare-up, and if this one is close enough, we could see it in the daytime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unique cosmic body was hidden in the vastness of the night sky. It was first seen in the 1950s, but only observed about four other times since then.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took a young summer student to clean up the spectra that we recorded to identify it,\u201d Fermilab scientist William Wester said in an article on the Fermilab website.<\/p>\n

Now, Fix has a lead on some groundbreaking research that would cause many seasoned astronomers to feel a little envious. He will spend the next few months examining spectra from the star, taken from high-power telescopes from across the globe. Fermilab officials were so impressed, they now want to use both Fix and Wyatt as the \u201crecruiting poster children\u201d of the lab\u2019s educational efforts.<\/p>\n

The two APSU students joined Smith at the lab for 10 weeks this summer as part of a Research Experience for Undergraduates program. The two were nominated by Smith, and then had to apply for the highly selective program. Once at the lab, they quickly gained the respect of facility\u2019s faculty members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great opportunity because they get a chance to work with researchers at a national institution,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey get exposed to all kinds of other fields. We don\u2019t do particle physics here (at APSU).\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]The REU program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, provides grant money for undergraduate students to participate in innovative new research. Thousands of college students apply each year in different disciplines, with only a select few receiving the coveted REU awards.<\/p>\n

For the last several years, the APSU Department of Physics has actively pushed for its students to apply for the program.
\n\u201cHaving Fermilab on the resume is extremely beneficial,\u201d Wyatt said. \u201cPlus you get to have research experience with your name on it. And the possibility of being able to find something and get published is awesome, especially at our age.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wyatt and Fix will be coauthors on a paper that results from their work at Fermilab. They went to the lab to conduct research for the Dark Energy Survey, which, according to the project\u2019s website, \u201cis designed to probe the origin of the accelerating universe and help uncover the nature of dark energy by measuring the 14-billion-year history of cosmic expansion with high precision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fix will write a separate paper on the identification of the cataclysmic variable star, but that discovery does not relate to Dark Energy Survey.<\/p>\n

For more information, please contact Smith at smithj@apsu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Mees Fix, an Austin Peay State University physics student, thought he might be in trouble. He was outside of Chicago, analyzing white dwarf stars at Fermilab \u2013 the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s national laboratory \u2013 when he noticed something strange. One of the stars was giving off way too much light energy. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[7793,23,7924,7207,20918,262,10458,512,825,20919,20920,20914,20913,7860,14289,20916,20915,13474,6699,20917],"class_list":["post-16432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-allyn-smith","tag-apsu","tag-apsu-department-of-physics","tag-apsu-students","tag-astronomers","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-chicago-il","tag-clarksville","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-dark-energy","tag-dark-energy-survey","tag-dwarf-stars","tag-fermilab","tag-national-science-foundation","tag-national-science-foundation-research-experience-for-undergraduates-program","tag-nova","tag-samuel-wyatt","tag-star","tag-u-s-department-of-energy","tag-william-wester"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-4h2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16433,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16432\/revisions\/16433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}