Stamatikos Awarded Top Prize in Astrophysics
For the third time in his career, The Ohio State University at Newark Assistant Professor Michael Stamatikos, PhD, has received the prestigious Bruno Rossi Prize from the American Astronomical Society’s High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD).
HEAD awards the Bruno Rossi Prize annually for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work.
“The supermassive black hole at the heart of this quasar powers an active galactic nucleus (AGN) whose spin axis is aligned along Earth’s line of sight. The extreme energy within this beamed jet accelerates particles toward us at near light speeds. Hence, we call these objects blazars,” explained Stamatikos. The neutrino triggering IceCube had an energy of roughly 300 trillion electron volts (TeV), which is about 50 times more energy achievable at our biggest particle accelerator: The Large Hadron Collider.
