Adrian L. Melott

Education, Awards

• Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas, 1981
• IREX Fellow, Moscow State University, 1983
• Enrico Fermi Fellow, University of Chicago, 1983-86
• Fellow of the American Physical Society, named 1996
  "For groundbreaking studies of the origin and evolution of cosmic structure".
• Steeples Service Award, University of Kansas, 2001
• Joseph Burton Forum Award, American Physical Society, 2002
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, named 2007
  "For distinguished contributions to cosmological large-scale structure, for organizing public support for teaching evolution, and for interdisciplinary research on astrophysical impacts on the biosphere."
• A pdf copy of my Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

• Astrobiophysics
  • This links the KU Astrobiophysics home page (more information, research paper links, etc.).
  • Did Gamma-Ray Bursts Cause Mass Extinctions of Life on Earth?
    Here are links to news stories in New Scientist and CNN.
  • Links between long-term trends in fossil biodiversity and our motion through the Universe.
    New Scientist space news story.
    Physics Today article with more details.
• Formerly, I worked primarily on the Large Scale Structure in the Universe
  • N-body Simulations of Large-Scale Structure; Formation of Superclusters and Voids
  • The first theoretical model of the Cosmic Web arising in a Cold Dark Matter dominated universe was published in 1983.
  • The first animation of cosmological clustering published (VHS) in a refereed journal
  • Cluster winds (a cosmic "windsock", they blow along supercluster axes.
  • The "Bullseye Effect" is a distortion in redshift survey maps introduced by the fact that galaxies are not at rest in their local rest frame. For an animated image click here. As these motions are caused by the gravitational field of matter in the Universe, they can be used to probe the mass density.
  • I have been quite skeptical of assumptions of high resolution in the N-body community; my past work illustrating this is summarized here, with references.
  • Cosmology group home page
• Research publications and background
  • A pdf copy of my Curriculum Vitae
  • Most of my as yet unpublished manuscripts are in the arXiv archive
  • Most of my published works can be found here by entering Melott into the search query .

Educational Interests

• PHSX 111 home page
• A A Conference "Science, Teaching, and the Search for Origins
• Graduate and Undergraduate Research as Education
• Integrated Humanities/Sciences Educational Efforts
• Development of Cosmology curricula for primary school
• Development of Cosmology curricula for religious institutions

Dealing with Creationists and so-called "Design Theorists"

• A general essay on dealing with creationism
• An irreverent, slightly amusing early history of the school board events in Kansas.
• A disrepectful essay entitled "Intelligent Design is Creationism in a cheap tuxedo"

Other interests

• Unitarian Universalist Ministry
• Combating the plagues of superstition, gullibility, and other substitutes for thinking. Try the fish page or the skeptics' page. Even more fun can be had on the F.L.A.T. home page. . These are fine places to mine the absurdities created by the mindless extension of Biblical literalism. .
• Forestry in West Virginia.
• My other home
  The Google Earth view. The clearing with my house is slightly below center in this image. My land includes most of the forested area between the hills in the foreground.

  

• Landscape Gardening

• History and Culture of Afghanistan Isolated after the abandonment of the Great Silk Road, Afghanistan is freeze-dried ancient culture. The last successful conqueror was Genghis Khan. After fighting off the British Empire in the 19th century, and the Soviet Empire in the 20th, a civil war continued. The US had supported the most fanatical fundamentalists (who would never compromise with the Soviets), so they emerged as the most powerful faction. The war destroyed most of the relics of ancient crossroads culture, such as the Greco-Buddhist style of statuary . Extremes of climate and geology produced wonders like the Band-i-Amir lakes. . Mineral deposits over millions of years have left these ice-cold lakes as much as 20 feet above the surrounding countryside.

All of the images seen here except the Band-i-Amir lake picture are my own photography. Here are a few more pictures of Afghanistan before the holocaust:
• Street scene

• Ancient fortress in the Bamian valley

• Another view from the same fortress