From The Daily Star, April 7, 2008
By Jake Palmateer
Staff Writer
The director of the Science Discovery Center at SUCO was awarded a $100,007 grant to examine the causes of space weather.
Hugh Gallagher Jr., associate professor of physics and astronomy at the State University College at Oneonta, will administer the National Science Foundation grant over the next three years as he and students study the ionosphere and the forces that influence it.
The ionosphere is the top part of the atmosphere and consists of ionized gas in a zone 100 to 1,000 kilometers above Earth's surface, Gallagher said.
"This gas can have large variations in latitude and from day to night," he said.
"These variations can interfere with ground-to-ground radio communications, as well as space-to-ground satellite communications, Gallagher said.
He and the students are going to study the irregularities and the conditions on which they are dependent.
"It's nothing we can see directly," he said.
The area of magnetism around Earth and solar wind are among the forces that are known to influence this layer.
"They actually impose themselves on the ionosphere," Gallagher said.
In addition to understanding ionized gases, there are practical concerns for the research, Gallagher said.
The data collected could be useful to the airling industry, as well those who use GPS systems, he said.
Part of the grant funding will pay for two summer research fellowships for two students over the next three years.
A student will participate in a 10-week project at the University of Texas at Austin Applied Research Laboratory focusing on the equipment used to collect ionosphere data.
A second student will work with Gallagher and researchers from Siena College on creating a database of irregularities in the ionosphere.
"At SUNY Oneonta, we've been involving students more and more in meaningful high-end research prjects," Gallagher said.
Gallagher will use the grant to establish a series of six Coherent Ionospheric Doppler Receiver systems in the Northeast. He and his students will use the receivers to gather data on the space weather processes and place it in a database that will be made available to scientists nationwide, according to a news release from SUCO.
Gallagher, 44, joined the SUCO faculty in 2000 and has a doctorate in physics from Boston College.
For more information on the subject, Gallagher suggests visiting www.spaceweather.com. |
.jpg)