Karl Glazebrook

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Glazebrook (born May 11, 1965 in Chatham , Kent ) is an Anglo - Australian astronomer and cosmologist who studies the evolution of galaxies and the nature of dark energy . Glazebrook became known to the public with a work on the "color" of the universe.

biography

Karl Glazebrook was born in Chatham in 1965. He studied physics and theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge and obtained his doctorate in 1992 from the University of Edinburgh with a study in infrared astronomy . After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Durham , he returned to Cambridge in 1993, where he worked in a research group on the observation of galaxies up to 8 billion years old. In this project, Glazebrook succeeded in solving the problem of the faint blue galaxies with the help of the Hubble space telescope and thus making decisive contributions to the exploration of the early universe.

In 1995 he worked as an astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory (AAO) in Sydney . There he was responsible, among other things, for the optical instruments for creating the 2dF galaxy redshift map. Together with Joss Hawthorn, Glazebrook developed the nod-and-shuffle method, with which the resolving power of the earth-based telescopes could be significantly increased. During his time at the AAO, Glazebrook played a key role in the development of the Perl Data Language (PDL), an open source alternative to the IDL programming language .

In 2000 he moved to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , where he was appointed professor of astronomy in 2004. Glazebrook became one of the scientists in charge of the Gemini Observatory , a role he continued when he moved to Australia in 2006 to join the Swinburne University of Technology's Center for Astrophysics & Supercomputing in Melbourne .

Karl Glazebrook is one of the directors of the Gemini Deep Deep Survey and the GLARE project, which studies galaxies from the early days of the universe. These projects demonstrated that massive galaxies were formed much earlier than previously assumed. In addition, Glazebrook, together with Chris Blake, succeeded in developing an improved method for measuring the oscillation of baryons ( Baryon Acoustic Oscillation , BAO), with which dark energy can be investigated indirectly.

With (March 2008) over 230 publications and over 14,000 citations, Glazebrook is one of the most cited astronomers today.

The asteroid (10099) Glazebrook was named after Karl Glazebrook in 2000 .

What color is the universe?

Cosmic latte ( cosmic latte )
color code: # FFF8E7

Glazebrook's best-known publication came about as a “by-product” of the 2dF redshift map, in which around 200,000 galaxies were recorded. During the measurements, the age of the galaxies was determined by their color. While young stars have a bluish expression in their emission spectrum , the red components increase more and more as the stars develop into red giants .

Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry then asked themselves what “average” color the observed stars have and calculated an average value from all measured emission spectra. Glazebrook viewed the resulting color as a "bizarre intellectual exercise" as it could only be observed from a hypothetical point where all the stars would be equidistant and the stars would not move (to suppress redshift).

In a first publication in January 2002, Glazebrook and Baldry described the color of space as pale turquoise . Two months later, however, they had to correct their statement because the red component of the color was calculated too low due to an incorrect white balance . The actual color of the universe was now given as a light beige tone , which was given in the RGB color space with the values ​​RGB = {255, 248, 231} decimal , RGB = FFF8E7 hexadecimal .

Since the values ​​determined did not correspond to any named color, Karl Glazebrook called for name suggestions. According to a survey of astronomers at Johns Hopkins University, the name cosmic latte (cosmic latte) became popular because the beige shade resembles the milk foam of a latte macchiato . The beige color was later confirmed by measurements from the European Southern Observatory .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Glazebrook and Frossie Economou: PDL: The Perl Data Language from 1 September 1997; accessed on March 20, 2008.
  2. ^ Robert Irion: Early Galaxies Baffle Observers, But Theorists Shrug . In: Science , Vol. 303, No. 5657, January 23, 2004, p. 460.
  3. ↑ ADS ; accessed on March 23, 2008.
  4. ↑ JPL Small-Body Database Browser ; accessed on March 20, 2008.
  5. ↑ BBC : The color of the cosmos, January 11, 2002.
  6. ^ Eugenie Samuel: The Universe is turquoise, say astronomers . In: New Scientist , January 10, 2002.
  7. ↑ Eugenie Samuel: The Universe is not turquoise - it's beige . In: New Scientist , March 7, 2002.
  8. ↑ Wired : Universe: Beige, not Turquoise, March 8, 2002.
  9. ↑ ESO press release of December 19, 2003 ; accessed on March 22, 2018.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Glazebrook, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Chatham (Kent)