Journal Club



11.01.2016

"The APOSTLE simulations: solutions to the Local Group's cosmic puzzles"

Grzegorz Gajda (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Sawala et al. arXiv:1511.01098


18.01.2016

"Fast Radio Bursts"

Morgane Fortin (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Champion et al. arXiv:1511.07746


25.01.2016

"Mergers and the outside-in formation of dwarfs spheroidals"

Sylvain Fouquet (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Benitez-Llambay et al. arXiv:1511.06188 


01.02.2016

"Is there an upper limit to the black hole mass?"

Krzysztof Nalewajko (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on King, MNRAS 456 L109 (2016) and Inayoshi & Haiman arXiv:1601.02611


08.02.2016

"Evidence for a Distant Giant Planet in the Solar System"

Abbas Askar (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Batygin & Brown, AJ (2016) and Trujillo & Sheppard, Nature (2014)


15.02.2016

"First direct detection of gravitational waves"

Michał Bejger (CAMK)

based on ''Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger'' and companion articles, B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration) Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102


22.02.2016

"NUSTAR discovery of heavily obscured low luminosity AGN in the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 6286"

Tek Prasad Adhikari (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Ricci et al. ApJ (2016)


29.02.2016

"On very mysterious variable stars from OGLE"

Paweł Pietrukowicz (Astronomical Observatory, Warsaw University)

Based on Pietrukowicz et al., Acta Astronomica 65, 63 (2015)


07.03.2016

"Testing the speed of gravitational waves over cosmological distances with strong gravitational lensing"

Magdalena Sieniawska (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Collett & Bacon, arXiv:1602.05882


14.03.2016

"The Araucaria project: toward precise and accurate calibration of the cosmic distance scale. Presentation of the team"

Grzegorz Pietrzyński (CAMK, Warsaw)


21.03.2016

"Kathryn Zazenski: Artist"

Kathryn Zazenski (CAMK, Warsaw)

Visiting artist Kathryn Zazenski will discuss her art practice: including the people, places, and events that have shaped her perspective, what inspires her work, and the various projects she is involved in while working in Warsaw.


04.04.2016

"Three in one go: consequential angular momentum loss can solve major problems of CV evolution"

Diogo Belloni (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Schreiber et al., MNRAS (2016)


11.04.2016

"On deceptive X-ray lines: can solar corona help to explain the dark matter?"

Dominik Gronkiewicz (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Phillips et al. ApJ 809 (2015).


18.04.2016

" Gravitational waves and electrodynamics: New perspectives"

Miljenko Cemeljic (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Cabral and Lobo, arXiv:1603.08157


25.04.2016

"On the gamma-ray burst--gravitational wave association in GW150914"

Agnieszka Janiuk (CFT, Warsaw)

We speculate on the possible scenario for the formation of a gamma-ray burst accompanied by the GW signal. Our model invokes a close binary system consisting of a massive star and a black hole, which leads to triggering of a collapse of the star's nucleus, formation of a second black hole, and finally to the binary black hole merger. For the most-likely configuration of the binary spin vectors with respect to the orbital angular momentum in the GW150914 event, the recoil velocity acquired by the final black hole through gravitational waves emission allows it to take only a small fraction of matter from the host star. The gamma-ray burst is produced on the cost of accretion of this remnant matter onto the final black hole. The moderate spin of the final black hole accounts for the gamma-ray burst jet to be powered by a weak neutrino emission rather than the Blandford-Znajek mechanism, and hence explains low power available for the observed GRB signal.


09.05.2016

"From Birth to Death of Protoplanetary Disks: Modelling Their Formation, Evolution, and Dispersal"

Ananda Deepika Bollimpalli (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Kimura et al. arXiv:1604.05842


16.05.2016

"Gravitational Thought Experiments"

Donald Lynden-Bell (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge)

Whereas Maxwell's Electrodynamics was the culmination of a long series of experiments by Franklin, Priestley, Coulomb, Volta, Ampere and Faraday, Einstein produced General Relativity from a few guiding principles such as Causality and the Principle of Equivalence. The discovery of dark energy as a dominant force in Astronomy makes us consider the gravitational forces not merely due to mass but also those due to stress and due to currents of energy, currents of momentum and of currents of angular momentum. We do this by assuming Einstein's theory and working out the results of thought experiments analogous to the real experiments made in electricity. Analogies with Electricity are discussed and Bonnor's beautiful 1969 paper on the gravity of a light ray is analysed to give an alternative derivation of the light-bending formula.


23.05.2016

"The Big Alien Theory"

Katarzyna Drozd (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Simpson, MNRAS (2016)


06.06.2016

"Fast Radio Bursts: episode II"

Morgane Fortin (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Katz, Mod. Phys. Lett. A31 (2016)


13.06.2016

"A pulsation analysis of K2 observations of the subdwarf B star PG1142-037 during Campaign 1: A subsynchronously rotating ellipsoidal variable"

Monika Rybicka (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Reed et al., MNRAS 458 (2016)


20.06.2016

"Small satellites"

Ela Zocłońska (CAMK, Warsaw)

Short summary of the "13th INTEGRAL BART Workshop IBWS" which was organized in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic on April 18-21, 2016. During that workshop on "Small satellite day" the first Czech satellite VZLUSAT1 was presented as well as two concepts for the Czech BRITE (one with an X-ray and UV detector and a second one with an X-ray detector). The main goal of the workshop was to bring together scientific experimenters and payload providers with the small satellite designers and realizers and high-energy variability astrophysicists.

based on the 13th INTEGRAL BART Workshop IBWS Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic


27.06.2016

"High-Frequency and Type-C QPOs from Oscillating, Precessing Hot, Thick Flow"

David Abarca (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Fragile et al. arXiv:1602.08082


03.10.2016

"Repulsion and relativity: physics, psychology and sociology"

Jean-Pierre Lasota-Hirszowicz (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on:


10.10.2016

"AiRE Disks"

Varadarajan Parthasarathy (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Yazdi & Afshordi, arXiv:1609.06716


17.10.2016

"Recent news on spiral structure from theory and observations"

Marcin Semczuk (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on


24.10.2016

"The age structure of the Milky Way's halo"

Rodolfo Smiljanic (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Carollo et al., Nature Physics (2016)


07.11.2016

"The Changing Face of Galaxies Conference"

Ivana Ebrova (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on the 2016 CAASTRO Scientific Conference


14.11.2016

"Gravitational wave astrophysics: the future is now"

Ilya Mandel (Birmingham University)

The first detections of gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers have opened up new opportunities and challenges in astrophysics and fundamental physics. I will describe these recent discoveries and discuss advances in the analysis and interpretation of gravitational-wave observations. I will focus on my group's efforts to extract the astrophysical evolution of massive stellar binaries from observations of gravitational waves emitted during mergers of the stellar remnants.


21.11.2016

"Barred galaxies in the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation"

Grzegorz Gajda (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Algorry et al., arXiv (2016)


28.11.2016

"Gravitational Waves from Neutron Stars"

Magdalena Sieniawska (CAMK, Warsaw)

Based on Lasky, Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 32 (2015)


05.12.2016

"Resolved atomic lines reveal outflows in two ultraluminous X-ray sources"

Bei You (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Pinto et al., Nature 533 (2016).


12.12.2016

"Future Gravitational Wave Detectors Based on Atom Interferometry"

Brynmor Haskell (CAMK, Warsaw)

based on Geiger, arXiv:1611.09911 (2016)


19.12.2016

"What was the last Ig Nobel Prize in Physics given for?"

Morgane Fortin (CAMK, Warsaw)