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Merav Opher

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Merav Opher
Alma materUniversity of São Paulo
Scientific career
ThesisEfeitos de plasma no universo primordial (1998)

Merav Opher is a professor of astronomy at Boston University known for her work on the heliosphere, the cocoon formed by the wind emanated from the Sun as it travels in the Galaxy. In 2021 she was named a William Bentinck-Smith Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Education and career

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Opher was born in Israel and lived there until 1978 when she moved to Brazil with her parents.[1] In 1992 and 1998, Opher received her B.S. in physics and her Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the University of São Paulo.[2] Following her Ph.D., Opher was a postdoctoral investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1999 until 2001. She was a Caltech Scholar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at University of Michigan from 2001-2004. She was on the faculty of George Mason University from 2005 until 2010, at which point she moved to Boston University, where she was promoted to professor in 2020.[3]

Opher is the director of the SHIELD DRIVE Science Center at Boston University, a project funded by NASA that will study the shape of the heliosphere.[4][5] She has served on the Space Studies Board at the National Academy of Sciences which evaluated the progress of space and solar physics.[6]

Research

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Her research interests include computational and theoretical plasma physics in space and astrophysics, interaction of the Solar System with the interstellar medium, solar wind, and shocks in the lower corona, T-Tauri and Solar-Like Stars.[7] In 2001, Opher began work on the heliosphere while she was a postdoctoral student at the Jet Propulsion lab.[8] Her researcher focuses on how the solar wind shapes the heliosphere, the protective atmospheric shield between Earth and the rest of the galaxy, where she has shown the shape of the heliosphere is similar to a croissant and not a comet with a tail as previously thought.[9][10] Opher's 2020 paper expanding on the crescent shape of the heliosphere was published in Nature Astronomy, featured on the cover of the July 2020 issue,[11] and covered by the media.[12][13] In 2021, Opher's research revealed that the stability of the heliosphere originates from the neutral hydrogen particles that interact with the heliosphere.[14][15][16]

Opher has written in The Hill about the dangers of space tourism for people where she describes the radiation coming through space and the need to better understand how the heliosphere filters this radiation before people can travel safely to other planets.[17]

As of 2021, Opher's research has been cited more than 4400 times and she has an h-index of 37.[18]

Honors and awards

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In 2008, Opher received an NSF Young Investigator Award,[7] a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers,[19] and she was named a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences.[3] In 2021, Opher was named a William Bentinck-Smith Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute.[9]

Selected publications

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  • Opher, M.; Bibi, F. Alouani; Toth, G.; Richardson, J. D.; Izmodenov, V. V.; Gombosi, T. I. (2009). "A strong, highly-tilted interstellar magnetic field near the Solar System". Nature. 462 (7276): 1036–1038. Bibcode:2009Natur.462.1036O. doi:10.1038/nature08567. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 20033043. S2CID 205218936.
  • Opher, Merav; Stone, Edward C.; Liewer, Paulett C. (2006-03-20). "The Effects of a Local Interstellar Magnetic Field on Voyager 1 and 2 Observations". The Astrophysical Journal. 640 (1): L71–L74. arXiv:astro-ph/0603318. Bibcode:2006ApJ...640L..71O. doi:10.1086/503251. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 16029184.
  • Opher, Merav; Silva, Luis O.; Dauger, Dean E.; Decyk, Viktor K.; Dawson, John M. (2001-05-01). "Nuclear reaction rates and energy in stellar plasmas: The effect of highly damped modes". Physics of Plasmas. 8 (5): 2454–2460. arXiv:astro-ph/0105153. Bibcode:2001PhPl....8.2454O. doi:10.1063/1.1362533. ISSN 1070-664X. S2CID 18625282.
  • Tóth, Gábor; van der Holst, Bart; Sokolov, Igor V.; De Zeeuw, Darren L.; Gombosi, Tamas I.; Fang, Fang; Manchester, Ward B.; Meng, Xing; Najib, Dalal; Powell, Kenneth G.; Stout, Quentin F. (2012-02-01). "Adaptive numerical algorithms in space weather modeling". Journal of Computational Physics. Special Issue: Computational Plasma Physics. 231 (3): 870–903. Bibcode:2012JCoPh.231..870T. doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2011.02.006. hdl:2060/20110005631. ISSN 0021-9991.

References

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  1. ^ Merav Opher reads "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop (Favorite Poem Project), retrieved 2021-12-17
  2. ^ Opher, Merav (1998). Efeitos de plasma no universo primordial [Plasma effects in the primordial universe.] (Thesis) (in Portuguese). University of Sao Paulo. OCLC 55913904.
  3. ^ a b "Merav Opher" (PDF). BU. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  4. ^ "People | SHIELD DRIVE Science Center". sites.bu.edu. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  5. ^ Jahnke, Art (February 21, 2020). "Visualizing The Heliosphere, Our Solar System's Protective Bubble". Boston University. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  6. ^ Committee on the Review of Progress Toward Implementing the Decadal Survey – Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society; Space Studies Board; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2020-06-29). Progress Toward Implementation of the 2013 Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics: A Midterm Assessment. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25668. ISBN 978-0-309-67127-9. S2CID 241931425.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ a b "Merav Opher". BU Center for Space Physics. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  8. ^ Laskowski, Tara (2008). "Past Pluto - The Mason Spirit - George Mason University". spirit.gmu.edu. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  9. ^ a b "Merav Opher". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
  10. ^ Opher, M.; Drake, J. F.; Swisdak, M.; Zieger, B.; Toth, G. (2017-04-11). "The Twist of the Draped Interstellar Magnetic Field Ahead of the Heliopause: A Magnetic Reconnection Driven Rotational Discontinuity". The Astrophysical Journal. 839 (1): L12. arXiv:1702.06178. Bibcode:2017ApJ...839L..12O. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aa692f. ISSN 2041-8213. S2CID 119088337.
  11. ^ Opher, Merav; Loeb, Abraham; Drake, James; Toth, Gabor (2020-07-01). "A small and round heliosphere suggested by magnetohydrodynamic modelling of pick-up ions". Nature Astronomy. 4 (7): 675–683. Bibcode:2020NatAs...4..675O. doi:10.1038/s41550-020-1036-0. ISSN 2397-3366. S2CID 216241125.
  12. ^ Jean, Celia; Reich, Aaron (August 9, 2020). "Solar system's heliosphere may be croissant-shaped - study". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  13. ^ Crowley, James (2020-08-11). "NASA says we all live inside a giant "deflated croissant", yes really". Newsweek. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  14. ^ Opher, M.; Drake, J. F.; Zank, G.; Powell, E.; Shelley, W.; Kornbleuth, M.; Florinski, V.; Izmodenov, V.; Giacalone, J.; Fuselier, S.; Dialynas, K. (2021-12-01). "A Turbulent Heliosheath Driven by the Rayleigh–Taylor Instability". The Astrophysical Journal. 922 (2): 181. Bibcode:2021ApJ...922..181O. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac2d2e. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 244797589.
  15. ^ Reich, Aaron (December 5, 2021). "Neutral hydrogen gives solar system's heliosphere its croissant-shape". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  16. ^ Carleton, Audrey (December 7, 2021). "A Flaky Croissant-Shaped Bubble Surrounds Our Solar System, Scientists Say". www.vice.com. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  17. ^ Opher, Merav; Ayala, Christine (2021-11-27). "Health risks of space tourism: Is it responsible to send humans to Mars?". TheHill. Retrieved 2021-12-17.
  18. ^ "merav opher". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
  19. ^ "White House Announces 2007 Awards for Early Career Scientists and Engineers". georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
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