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Jay D. Salmonson
Physicist
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
University of California
L-038, P.O. Box 808
Livermore, CA 94551-7808
phone: (925) 422-9730
Email: salmonson@llnl.gov
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As
he stared in rapt attention at his data before him, his imagination
soared into the dizzying distances and through time to its places of
origin. A few photons, the whispering harbinger of distant worlds and
epochs and lives, triumphs and tragedies untold. His data cracked open
a door exposing the faintest gleam from shimmering oases through the
yawning, capacious, dark desert of the cosmos. He closed his eyes and
thought how fortunate he was to experience the wonderment and
grandeur of the universe and how the staggering size and awesome glory
of it is powerful and profound consecration of our infinitesimal yet
integral existence within it. He opened his eyes again... just a
bunch of stupid dots on a page. "More coffee", he thought.
Welcome to my webpage. I am currently
a staff scientist at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. I completed my doctorate through UC
Davis in September 1999. My primary focus has been on doing theoretical
and numerical research on gamma-ray
bursts. In particular, I write computer programs to model the
physics of possible progenitors (e.g. colliding neutrons stars or a
special type of supernova) to see if these models can create the
gamma-ray bursts we observe. I also work backward by analyzing the
gamma-ray burst observations to try to glean clues about how their
internal engines work.
My interests in astrophysics include
gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, neutron stars, black holes,
magnetohydrodynamic jets, neutrinos, cosmology, etc. In addition, many
areas of physics are interesting to me including general relativity,
quantum field theory and strings.
Jay Salmonson
August, 2003