Timothy Dolch, Physics and Astronomy

Name:

Timothy Dolch

Title:

Associate Professor

Department:

Physics and Astronomy

Describe your research in about 200 words.

I study pulsars, which are rapidly rotating collapsed remnants of stars after they go supernova (explode). They make a radio beam so that when they spin, there is a radio signal that flashes on and off as seen from the Earth, much like a lighthouse seen from a distance. Using the University of New Mexico’s Long Wavelength Array (LWA) radio telescope and other radio telescopes around the world, we can watch these pulsars and see how their regularity changes over time. If they seem to speed up or slow down in a particular way, this can be an effect of (much more distant) supermassive black holes. Pairs of these black holes, in the process of merging, make waves in the fabric of spacetime itself, and this is what changes the pulsar signals. The multi-institution collaboration I work with, called NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves) found the first evidence of these supermassive black holes three years ago. Meanwhile, our team at UNM is also doing other science with the LWA and its stations, such as looking for bursts of radio emission from Jupiter-like planets around other stars.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

How to pick locks. We once had to break into a locked cabinet to repair a radio telescope.