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Star Hunter
A Carolina junior finds a 13 billion-year-old explosion
By Lynn Thomasson
A star dies and collapses into a black hole. Nearly 13 billion years
later, Joshua Haislip gets a text message in his dorm
room telling him a telescope in Chile detected the massive explosion.
Haislip rushes to Phillips Hall, where he meets up with faculty mentor,
Daniel Reichart. Reichart and Haislip connect, via a virtual conferencing
room in Phillips Hall, to the telescope’s control room. The pair
work over the next two nights taking and processing photos of the explosion – the
oldest and most distant explosion in the universe ever detected.
But when Haislip and Reichart took the photos, there wasn’t enough
information for the scientists to know what they were finding. Was this
a very distant explosion or simply a nearby one occurring in a very dusty
galaxy?
Over the next several days, Haislip, Reichart and other astronomers
on the research team took different types of images and talked to scientists
all over the world to figure out what they had found. “We put
out a notice to about a thousand astronomers in a listserv saying we
either have a high red-shift burst or a burst which occurred in an extremely
dusty galaxy,” says Haislip.
Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory in Japan, a telescope
called Subaru in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, helped collect data from the explosion
and verify that it was the most distant explosion ever observed. “I
was sitting in a computer science class when I got the email confirming
the distance. It was really exciting,” he says.
Haislip, a Carolina junior, got a first glimpse of a
star which died when the universe was still very young. The age of the
explosion was dated at 12.8 billion years, but most scientists say the
universe is only 13.7 billion years old. Astronomers don’t know
much about the early universe, but explosions like this one give scientists
a picture of what it must have looked like right after the Big Bang.
The thrill from finding the last explosion motivates Haislip and the
rest of the team to work hard and keep a watchful eye on what’s
happening in the cosmos. “What sets our team apart is that we
go after everything. There’s not a burst that goes off that we
don’t observe,” says Haislip.
It’s hard work, but Haislip says he loves being on the search
for the unknown. “What did the early universe look like? Once
we learn, who knows what kind of exciting stuff will come out of it?”
Haislip calls finding the explosion “a bit of luck, but a lot
of persistence.” And that persistence is paying off for him. Haislip
is the lead author on an article about his discovery in Nature – one
of the oldest and most prestigious scientific journals. He is publishing
the paper using research he’s done over the last year with Reichart
and the team of graduate and undergraduate students. “This publication
is in Nature – that’s a huge deal. I was very shocked,” says
Haislip. He’s also given speeches and talked to people at National
Geographic about his research.
Haislip’s success comes from his active role in the research laboratory. “Dr.
Reichart allows the students to be involved. It’s not the dirty
tasks no one wants to do. It’s true research,” he says. Without
leaving Chapel Hill, Haislip has learned how to control six robotically-operated
telescopes in Chile, called PROMPT. He used this to take pictures of
galaxies and nebula thousands of light years away.
If you are interested in research, strike up a conversation with a professor
you might like to work with. “Don’t just sit there and expect
it to happen. You’ve got to look for it. Go online. Go talk to
professors and find out what they’re doing. Ask them if they need
help and almost all of them will say that they do,” he says.
Next year, Haislip plans to graduate and stay in Chapel Hill working
with Reichart and training new undergraduate researchers. Then, he plans
to spend seven months hiking the Appalachian Trail before going to graduate
school.
Joshua Haislip is a junior majoring in physics at Carolina. He works
with Daniel Reichart, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy.
Check
out pictures and a short animated movie about the explosion
Learn
more about Reichart’s research into the cosmos
Read
an article in Endeavors Magazine about the discovery
- The Oldest Explosion Arrives
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