Joseph Silk

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Joseph Silk (2015)

Joseph "Joe" Ivor Silk (born December 3, 1942 in London ) is a British - American astronomer and former Savilian professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford .

life and work

Silk graduated from Cambridge University with a Masters degree in 1963 and received a PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University in 1968 . 1968/69 he was a Research Fellow at Cambridge University and 1969/70 Research Associate at Princeton University . In 1970 he became assistant professor and in 1978 professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley , where he also became professor of physics in 1989. From 1999 to 2011 he was Savilian Professor at Oxford. He is an Emeritus Fellow at New College, Oxford. In 2010 he became Homewood Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University .

In 1975/76 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study and in 1982/83 at the Institute for Astrophysics (IAP) of the University of Paris VI (Pierre et Marie Curie) in Paris, where he has been researching and teaching since 2011. He also teaches at Gresham College from 2015 .

Silk has published over 500 articles in journals, including many in Nature and Science, primarily on galaxy formation and cosmology . He dealt with inhomogeneities in the cosmic background radiation and described for the first time the silk attenuation named after him .

He proposed new indirect methods of discovering dark matter and its properties.

From the different behavior of dark matter in small galaxies and large galaxy clusters, Silk 2005 saw indications of large extra dimensions (six spatial dimensions instead of the three observed, with the additional three dimensions having dimensions in the nanometer range, similar to the Randall-Sundrum model ), which change the gravitational force in the nanometer range. The strength of the self-interaction of dark matter is greater in small galaxies than in galaxy clusters, which, according to Silk, is due to the action of the extra dimensions in the nanometer range. Since the dark matter moves faster in large clusters, it does not feel the stronger attraction at close range there.

He is also known as a sought-after lecturer and for popular science books.

Honors and prizes

He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Astronomical Society .

Books

  • The infinite Cosmos: Questions from the frontiers of cosmology , Oxford University Press, 2006, German-language edition: Das almost infinite Universum: Grenzfragen der Kosmologie, CH Beck, Munich, 2006
  • On the Shores of the Unknown: A Short History of the Universe , Cambridge University Press, 2005, German-language edition: Die Geschichte des Kosmos: From the Big Bang to the Universe of the Future , Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg, 1996
  • The Big Bang , WH Freeman and Company, New York, 1989, German-language edition: "Der Urknall", Birkhäuser-Springer Verlag, 1990
  • Cosmic Enigmas , Springer, 1994 (also The left hand of creation , Oxford UP 1994)

Articles (selection)

  • Fluctuations in the Primordial Fireball, Nature, Volume 215, 1967, pp. 1155-1156
  • Cosmic black-body radiation and galaxy formation, Astroph. J., Volume 151, 1968, pp. 459-471 (Silk damping)
  • with SM Lea, E. Kellogg u. a .: Thermal-Bremsstrahlung Interpretation of Cluster X-Ray Sources, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 184, 1973, L105-L111
  • On the fragmentation of cosmic gas clouds. I-The formation of galaxies and the first generation of stars, Astroph. J., Volume 211, 1977, pp. 638-648
  • with ML Wilson: Residual Fluctuations in the Matter and Radiation Distribution after the Decoupling Epoch, Physica Scripta, Volume 21, 1980, pp. 708-713
  • with J. Richard Bond , George Efstathiou : Massive neutrinos and the large-scale structure of the universe, Phys. Rev. Lett., Vol. 45, 1980, pp. 1980-1984
  • with C. Norman, Clumpy Molecular Clouds: A Dynamic-Model Self-consistently Regulated by T Tauri Star Formation, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 238, 1980, pp 158-174
  • with ML Wilson: On the Anisotropy of the Cosmological Background Matter and Radiation Distribution. I. The Radiation Anisotropy in a Spatially Flat Universe, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 243, 1981, pp. 14-25
  • with N. Vittorio: Fine-Scale Anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background in a Universe Dominated by Cold Dark Matter, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 285, 1984, L39-L43
  • with M. Srednicki: Cosmic-Ray Antiprotons as a Probe of a Photino-Dominated Universe, Physical Review Letters, Volume 53, 1984, pp. 624-627
  • with Keith Olive , M. Srednicki: The Photino, the Sun, and High-Energy Neutrinos, Physical Review Letters, Volume 55, 1985, pp. 257-259
  • with Avishai Dekel: The origin of dwarf galaxies, cold dark matter, and biased galaxy formation, Astroph. J., Volume 303, 1986, pp. 39-55
  • with Martin White, Douglas Scott: Anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 32, 1994, pp. 319-370
  • with W. Hu, N. Sugiyama: The Physics of Microwave Background Anisotropies, Nature, Volume 386, 1997, pp. 37-43
  • with Max Tegmark , MJ Rees a . a .: How Small Were the First Cosmological Objects ?, Astrophysical Journal, Volume 474, 1997, pp. 1-12
  • with E. Gawiser: Extracting Primordial Density Fluctuations, Science, Volume 280, 1998, pp. 1405-1411
  • with MJ Rees: Quasars and Galaxy Formation, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Volume 31, 1998, L1-L4
  • with P. Gondolo: Dark Matter Annihilation at the Galactic Center, Physical Review Letters, Volume 83, 1999, pp. 1719-1722
  • with Gianfranco Bertone, Dan Hooper: Particle dark matter: Evidence, candidates and constraints, Physics Reports, Volume 405, 2005, pp. 279-390

Web links

Commons : Joseph Silk  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gresham College, Department of Astronomy
  2. ↑ Bo Quin, Ue-Li Pen, Joseph Silk, Observational Evidence for Extra Dimensions from Dark Matter, Arxiv 2005
  3. ↑ Philip Ball: Dark matter highlights extra dimensions , Nature, Online, September 2, 2005
  4. ^ National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected. ( Memento of August 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Press release of the National Academy of Sciences (nasonline.org) of April 29, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Silk, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Silk, Joseph Ivor; Silk, Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American astronomer, university professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH London