Tom Murphy (born January 9, 1970 [1] ) is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the project investigator for the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation Project. Professor Murphy completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology after which he completed a postdoc at the University of Washington - Seattle before becoming a professor at the University of California, San Diego. In 2010 his group was responsible for locating the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 1 rover. [2]
Murphy is also known for his blog "Do The Math" which examines societal issues related to energy production, climate change, and economic growth from an astrophysicist's perspective. [3]
In 2021 Dr. Murphy published Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet textbook, a physics open educational resource (OER) that includes a version optimized for printing. [4]
Tidal acceleration is an effect of the tidal forces between an orbiting natural satellite and the primary planet that it orbits. The acceleration causes a gradual recession of a satellite in a prograde orbit, and a corresponding slowdown of the primary's rotation. The process eventually leads to tidal locking, usually of the smaller body first, and later the larger body. The Earth–Moon system is the best-studied case.
Lunokhod was a series of Soviet robotic lunar rovers designed to land on the Moon between 1969 and 1977. Lunokhod 1 was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on an extraterrestrial body.
Lunokhod 1, also known as Аппарат 8ЕЛ № 203 was the first robotic rover on the Moon and the first to freely move across the surface of an astronomical object beyond the Earth. Sent by the Soviet Union it was part of the robotic rovers Lunokhod program. The Luna 17 spacecraft carried Lunokhod 1 to the Moon in 1970. Lunokhod 0 (No.201), the previous and first attempt to land a rover, launched in February 1969 but failed to reach Earth orbit.
Lunokhod 2 was the second of two uncrewed lunar rovers that landed on the Moon by the Soviet Union as part of the Lunokhod programme.
A retroreflector is a device or surface that reflects radiation back to its source with minimum scattering. This works at a wide range of angle of incidence, unlike a planar mirror, which does this only if the mirror is exactly perpendicular to the wave front, having a zero angle of incidence. Being directed, the retroflector's reflection is brighter than that of a diffuse reflector. Corner reflectors and cat's eye reflectors are the most used kinds.
Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) is the practice of measuring the distance between the surfaces of the Earth and the Moon using laser ranging. The distance can be calculated from the round-trip time of laser light pulses travelling at the speed of light, which are reflected back to Earth by the Moon's surface or by one of several retroreflectors installed on the Moon. Three were placed by the United States' Apollo program, two by the Soviet Lunokhod 1 and 2 missions, and one by India's Chandrayaan-3 mission.
The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the University of California. It is on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, United States. The observatory is managed by the University of California Observatories, with headquarters on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus, where its scientific staff moved in the mid-1960s. It is named after James Lick.
Charles Hard Townes was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. Townes was an adviser to the United States Government, meeting every US president from Harry S. Truman (1945) to Bill Clinton (1999).
The Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation, or APOLLO, is a project at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. It is an extension and advancement of previous Lunar Laser Ranging experiments, which use retroreflectors on the Moon to track changes in lunar orbital distance and motion.
Tom Mike Apostol was an American analytic number theorist and professor at the California Institute of Technology, best known as the author of widely used mathematical textbooks.
A chemical laser is a laser that obtains its energy from a chemical reaction. Chemical lasers can reach continuous wave output with power reaching to megawatt levels. They are used in industry for cutting and drilling.
Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings is evidence, or analysis of evidence, about the Moon landings that does not come from either NASA or the U.S. government, or the Apollo Moon landing hoax theorists. This evidence provides independent confirmation of NASA's account of the six Apollo program Moon missions flown between 1969 and 1972.
Padma Kant Shukla was a distinguished Professor and first International Chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department of Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. He was also the director of the International Centre for Advanced Studies in Physical Sciences at Ruhr-University Bochum. He held a PhD in physics from Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India and a second doctorate in Theoretical Plasma Physics from Umeå University in Sweden.
Elda Emma Anderson was an American physicist and health researcher. During World War II, she worked on the Manhattan Project at Princeton University and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she prepared the first sample of pure uranium-235 at the laboratory. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, she became professor of physics at Milwaukee-Downer College in 1929. After the war, she became interested in health physics. She worked in the Health Physics Division of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and established the professional certification agency known as the American Board of Health Physics.
Peter Guy Wolynes is an American theoretical chemist and physicist. Since 2011 he has been a Bullard-Welch Foundation Professor of Science and professor of chemistry at Rice University. He is widely recognized for his significant contributions to the theories of protein folding, glasses, and gene networks. Previously he was James R. Eiszner Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Francis H.C. Crick Chair of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.
Peter Walden Milonni is an American theoretical physicist who deals with quantum optics, laser physics, quantum electrodynamics and the Casimir effect.
John Holmes Malmberg was an American plasma physicist and a professor at the University of California, San Diego. He was known for making the first experimental measurements of Landau damping of plasma waves in 1964, as well as for his research on non-neutral plasmas and the development of the Penning–Malmberg trap.
Richard R. Freeman is an American physicist, academic and researcher. He is an affiliated professor of physics at the University of Washington, a distinguished emeritus professor of mathematical and physical science at Ohio State University, and an emeritus Edward Teller Professor of Applied Science at University of California, Davis.
Eric George Adelberger is an American experimental nuclear physicist and gravitational metrologist.