Eric Agol

Eric Agol (born May 13, 1970 in Hollywood , California ) is an American astronomer and astrophysicist.

Agol studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in 1992 and received a PhD in physics (The Effects of Magnetic Fields, Absorption, and Relativity on the Polarization of Accretion Disks in 1997 from the University of California, Santa Barbara around Supermassive Black Holes). As a post-doctoral student , he was at Johns Hopkins University until 2000 and a Chandra Fellow at Caltech from 2000 to 2003 . In 2003 he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington , where he became an Associate Professor in 2009 and Professor in 2014.

He dealt with quasars , gravitational lenses and supermassive black holes, but above all with the discovery of extrasolar planets and the techniques required for this (including those for the discovery of earth-like planets, of moons and continents and seas on extrasolar planets).

In 2000, together with Fulvio Melia and Heino Falcke , he proposed the possibility of observing the event horizon of the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way (Sagittarius A *) with interconnected radio telescopes (VLBI at submillimeter wavelengths). The implementation is aimed at in the Event Horizon Telescope .

In 2003, he predicted the possibility of the discovery of gravitational lensing in binary stars with Kepler (for example, a white dwarf with a sun-like star), which was also observed with the telescope.

In 2005, he was one of the first to show that exoplanet transits can vary over time due to accompanying planets. He coined the term "transit timing variations" to describe this.

He was involved in the discovery of the Earth-like planet Kepler-62f , which is 1.4 times the diameter of the Earth and is located in the habitable zone.

The exotic planetary systems he was involved in discovering include Kepler-36, in which an Earth-like planet and a gas planet approach each other within 1.9 million km (the shortest planetary spacing discovered so far) and Kepler-47, in which two large ones Gas planets orbiting two suns. With Kepler-90 he also discovered the first system with seven planets (two earth-like, three super-earths and two much larger planets further out).

His twin brother, Ian Agol, is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley .

Web links

• Homepage

Individual evidence

1. ^ Falcke, Melia, Agol: Viewing the Shadow of the Black Hole at the Galactic Center , Astroph. J. Letters, Volume 528, 2000, p. 13, bibcode : 2000ApJ ... 528L..13F
2. ↑ Eric Agol, Jason Steffen Re'em Sari, Will Clarkson, On detecting terrestrial planets with timing of giant planet transits , Monthly Notices Royal Astron. Soc., Volume 359, 2005, Issue 2
3. ^ William Borucki, Eric Agol et al. a., Kepler-62: a five planet system with planets of 1.4 and 1.6 earth radii in the habitable zone, Science, Volume 340, 2013, p. 587, pdf