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Date: Friday, May 3, 2019
Time: 3:00 PM
Place: 162, 2nd floor, Auditorium
Speaker: Blakesley Burkhart, Associate Research Scientist, CCA
Title: The Turbulent Universe: Why the Last Unsolved Problem in Classical Physics Matters for Astrophysics
Abstract: The gas and dust between stars in galaxies is highly turbulent and magnetized. It is now understood that magnetic fields and turbulence affect many processes of astrophysical interest including star formation, cosmic ray acceleration, and the evolution of structures in the interstellar medium. In this talk, I shall review the fundamentals of galactic turbulence and discuss progress in the development of new techniques for comparing observational data with magnetohydrodynamic turbulence simulations. I will highlight how fluid turbulence is a fundamental unsolved problem in physics which connects different areas of research across the FlatironInstitute. Finally, I will highlight how turbulence plays a key role in the process of star formation and I will demonstrate how the star formation efficiency can be analytically calculated from our understanding of how turbulence, gravity, and stellar feedback induce density fluctuations in galaxies.