Norman W. Murray

Dr. Murray's work elucidates the physical processes that lead to the formation and evolution of planets, stars, supermassive black holes, galaxies, and large scale structure. He uses tools ranging from pencil and paper calculations, to large scale numerical simulations on the worlds largest computers, to observations employing space-based x-ray, ultraviolet, and infrared telescopes, and ground based radio and optical telescopes. For example, simulations of the thousands of currently known extra-solar planetary systems show that almost all are dynamically unstable; there evolution is chaotic. For most if not all systems, this chaos is caused by the interactions of three neighboring (or more rarely, next to neighboring) planets who's orbital period ratios are simple low order fractions. These so-called three body mean motion resonance have been known since the time of Laplace, but their far reaching consequences have only recently been recognized. Other recent work includes the study of dust-driven outflows from the surroundings of accreting super-massive black holes, and tracing the large scale structure of the universe using novel telescopes like COMap and the Cerro Chanjnantor Atacama Telescope.