by Lisa J. Tabet
Daily Lobo
A research professor from the UNM Physics and Astronomy department is braving the harsh elements of Antarctica to research the effects of the sun on earth’s weather patterns.
Stuart Jefferies, who is making his fifth trip to the country with a team of researchers, has several objectives including determining why the sun’s outer layers are hotter than its surface.
By finding out more about the sun’s temperature and layers, the team, which includes researchers from UNM and the Maui Scientific Research Center, can learn to predict weather patterns more accurately.
“There is a growing body of evidence showing that phenomena that happens on the sun directly affects things on Earth.” Jefferies said. “The level of direct magnetic activity on the sun has been linked to droughts and floods on the Earth.”
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The team works with the University of Rome and the Naples Observatory, which fund the group’s trips to Dome C, a place in Antarctica even more remote than the South Pole, where their intricate, painstaking research is conducted, Jefferies said.
Jefferies’ time in Antarctica wasn’t exclusive to research however, and he has many stories about the surreal region of the world.
Sleeping on boards in small huts buried under the ice, the researchers find ways to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, he said.
“You can take a cup of hot water and you can throw it in the air and it just turns into a cloud of small snow particles. That’s pretty wild” Jefferies said. “The sun is up during the summer in Antarctica all 24 hours. You get up to go to the bathroom or something at 3 a.m., and it’s as bright as midday out there.”
The population at the South Pole is about 220, and various researcher groups make up about one third of that.
Jefferies is also the researcher director at the Maui Scientific Research Center and runs the day-to-day operations at the center.
Some of the areas of research at the center include space surveillance, solar physics and advanced imaging methods, he said.
The field of advanced imaging methods is especially flourishing these days, and Jefferies and his team are working on the logistics of delusional totomology, which can be applied to optical mammography.
Instead of crushing a woman’s breasts between two plates using x-rays for a mammogram, they can use a cup with a small laser that has that same power as the x-ray.
“You can image the breast with an infrared light and you can actually detect the difference between benign and malignant tumors without biopsy,” Jefferies said.
Another area being explored at the center are techniques for sharpening images taken through the geo-atmosphere, which get distorted because of the atmosphere.
The center also does research for the U.S. Air Force.
The Maui Research Center is funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the U.S. Air Force and receives grants from UNM.
Any students interested in completing an internship in Maui at the Maui Scientific Research Center should visit its Web site at www.msrc.unm.edu for more details.
