Ryan Golant

@rgolant.bsky.social

821 Followers 404 Following

PhD candidate in Astronomy at Columbia University || cancer survivor || science communicator || cat enthusiast || professional waster of time

Alfvie, a gray-brown tabby cat, paws at the TV screen during the USA vs. Belgium World Cup match
An excerpt from the Wikipedia page on the hydraulic press: "A hydraulic press is a machine press using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force. It uses the hydraulic equivalent of a mechanical lever, and was also known as a Bramah press after the inventor, Joseph Bramah, of England. He invented and was issued a patent on this press in 1795. As Bramah (who is also known for his development of the flush toilet) installed toilets, he studied the existing literature on the motion of fluids and put this knowledge into the development of the press." (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_press)
A photo of my cat Alfvie lying on the wood floor while yawning -- though it looks like he's screaming.
An artist's depiction of Alfven waves propagating outwards from the surface of the Sun. These waves carry energy and plasma into the solar corona. Source: https://www.isas.jaxa.jp/en/feature/forefront/160229.html
A simple schematic depiction of Alfven waves propagating along a few distorted magnetic field lines.
The magnetic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability shown in a snapshot from a simulation of the solar wind -- a stream of charged particles from the Sun -- interacting with Earth's atmosphere. Near the top and bottom of the image, one can see structures (in crimson) resembling breaking ocean waves (which are caused by the hydrodynamic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability). Source: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/simulation-of-magnetic-bubble-around-earth/
Ripples (called surface gravity waves) propagating across the surface of a pond in the form of concentric rings. Source: https://tjbottles.medium.com/ripples-in-the-water-b45e55b36ae3
A cartoon image of a ball sitting at the tip of a steep peak. In red text, the words "unstable equilibrium" are written below the ball.
A cartoon image of a ball lying at the bottom of a valley. In red text, the words "stable equilibrium" are written above the ball.
My cat Alfvie, a gray and brown tabby, lying on my side with his belly up
My cat Alfvie curled up in a tight ball on a bath mat
A rotating, collapsing cloud threaded by magnetic field lines (depicted in green). Red and blue arrows illustrate the sense of the rotation. Source: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2041-8205/794/1/L18/pdf
A cartoon depiction of a rotating, collapsing cloud of plasma, forming a newborn star. Source: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~pogosyan/teaching/ASTRO_122/lect15/lecture15.html
A cartoon depiction of Alfven's theorem: as a sample of plasma is deformed, the frozen-in magnetic field lines that thread the plasma are deformed in the same way. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnqUh_lAWnw
Magnetic field lines in a plasma being deformed by the flow of the plasma (to the right); the tension in the field lines resists this deformation: Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnqUh_lAWnw
The large-scale magnetic field of our Earth depicted using magnetic field lines. Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/magnetic-geographical-pole-earth-106154861
The magnetic field around a bar magnet depicted as a vector field, with many small arrows showing the local direction of the magnetic field. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfBQ2J1DoWM
Two charged particles -- one positively charged and one negatively charged -- being deflected in opposite directions by a magnetic field (indicated by x's, meaning that the magnetic field is pointing into the screen). Source: https://www.wizeprep.com/online-courses/20115/chapter/3/core/3/1
An illustration of the magnetic vector field around a bar magnet; each arrow depicts the local direction of the field at a point in space. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfBQ2J1DoWM
My cat Alfvie, a gray and brown tabby, stretched out on the couch with his stripes exposed.
My cat Alfvie peacefully sleeping on a warm blanket
An artist's depiction of the magnetic field in the disk of the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51). The magnetic field measured by SOFIA is overlaid on a Hubble image of M51.
A photo of a young Hannes Alfvén in 1942
Our sun, a large ball of plasma, spewing out a solar flare consisting of energetic, electrically-charged particles
An animation depicting a simplified view of the microscopic particles in a gas flying around and colliding with one another
My cat Alfvie, a gray and brown tabby, looking up at me with very wide eyes