Dr. John O'Meara, Saint Michael's College assistant professor of physics, learned last week that he and five colleagues from around the country have received a $474,617 grant from NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, to carry out a study of galaxies and their halos. Professor O'Meara's portion of the grant is $46,983.
"Our work tries ultimately to answer the question: Where do galaxies get the material they need to form stars?" Dr. O'Meara said.
The grant proposal explains that the highly ionized space between galaxies, the intergalactic medium, is critical "to understanding the formation and evolution of structures in the universe."
The scientists working on the project come from Notre Dame (two individuals), University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of California at San Diego, the European Southern Observatories based in Chile, and Dr. O'Meara of Saint Michael's College. They will be analyzing data already collected over the last decade through use of the Keck Observatory telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.
The first half of the study will be to analyze existing data, filling in extra material with trips to Keck as needed, and configuring it in a useable way, Professor O'Meara explained. Formulating the data that already exists is the first step, after that, he said, "we will go after the science."
Dr. O'Meara earned his doctorate in physics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2004. His dissertation focused on "Cosmology from the High Redshift Intergalactic Medium." He is an author on 19 refereed journal articles published, mostly, in Astrophysical Journal and Astronomical Journal.
At Saint Michael's College, Learn What Matters. Saint Michael's is a distinctive Catholic liberal arts college that provides education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools to lead a successful, purposeful life that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 371 Colleges. It is one of 270 colleges and universities nationwide, and one of only 20 Catholic colleges, with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Saint Michael's has 1,900 undergraduate students, some 250 graduate students and 100 international students. Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other grants. The college is one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges as listed in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Saint Michael's is located just outside Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns.