{"id":23230,"date":"2016-09-23T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=23230"},"modified":"2016-09-22T23:30:39","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T04:30:39","slug":"austin-peay-state-university-physics-student-visits-national-lab-discovers-quasar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2016\/09\/23\/austin-peay-state-university-physics-student-visits-national-lab-discovers-quasar\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University Physics Student visits National Lab, Discovers Quasar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Quasars\u2014massive black holes that emit large amounts of radiation\u2014are among the brightest objects in the universe, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re easy to identify.<\/p>\n

For centuries, they\u2019ve been mistaken for other shining celestial objects, and in recent years, astronomers had yet to accurately identify a certain one of these brilliant specks in the southern sky.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay physics student Jacob Robertson<\/p><\/div>\n

But earlier this summer, Austin Peay State University student Jacob Robertson took a look at this object and realized it wasn\u2019t just another star.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first thought was, \u2018I know this is a quasar, I hope it hasn\u2019t been discovered yet,\u2019\u201d Robertson, a physics major, said.<\/p>\n

It hadn\u2019t. Now, Robertson is the second APSU student in recent years to make an important scientific discovery. In 2013, then-student Mees Fix also discovered a quasar while examining white dwarf stars.<\/p>\n

Like Fix three years ago, Robertson spent some of the summer of 2016 at Fermilab\u2014the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s national laboratory\u2014with Dr. Allyn Smith, APSU professor of physics and astronomy, assisting with the international Dark Energy Survey. According to Fermilab\u2019s website, the survey \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

\u201cIt was my job to go through and reduce the data to confirm that the stars in this sample were white dwarfs,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cI had read (Fix\u2019s) paper, so I knew what a quasar spectrum was supposed to look like. When I came across (the object), I immediately knew it was a quasar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The APSU student will now be the lead author on an academic paper about the discovery. Smith and APSU physics student Deborah Gulledge, who also worked at Fermilab this summer, will be listed as co-authors.<\/p>\n

Robertson, only a junior, already has a strong resume as a physics and astronomy researcher. In addition to his work at Fermilab, he traveled to Arizona in early September to conduct research at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and in August, he accompanied a team of APSU students to Montana State University to participate in the NASA-funded Eclipse Ballooning Project.<\/p>\n

Information on that project is available online at www.apsu.edu\/news\/apsu-students-launch-high-altitude-balloon-during-2017-eclipse<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe unique thing about Austin Peay\u2019s physics department is that there are so many opportunities to get involved in research,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cAnd the professors do push you to get involved in something.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information on the APSU Department of Physics and Astronomy, visit www.apsu.edu\/physics<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Quasars\u2014massive black holes that emit large amounts of radiation\u2014are among the brightest objects in the universe, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019re easy to identify. For centuries, they\u2019ve been mistaken for other shining celestial objects, and in recent years, astronomers had yet to accurately identify a certain one of these brilliant specks in […]<\/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_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[7793,23,26537,13778,20918,262,29183,825,20919,29185,20913,16297,29186,29184,19616,29182,19180,6699],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-62G","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23230"}],"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=23230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23231,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23230\/revisions\/23231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}