By Abby Van Selous (COM’24)
Madison VanWyngarden (CAS’24) was in elementary school when she discovered her interest in astronomy.
“One day I walked into a bookstore, and I saw a book about astronomy and about the universe,” she said. “I got it and I just read it over and over and over again. I thought it was the most interesting thing I’d ever heard of.”
From that moment, VanWyngarden knew she wanted to study the universe. She leaned into science and math classes in middle and high school, and eventually came to Boston University to study astronomy and physics. But the question remained: what type of astrophysics did she like best and what type of research did she want to do?
VanWyngarden has spent the past four years answering that question — studying everything from dying stars to particle physics to exoplanets. And, in the process, she has been awarded two awards in recognition of her work and future potential as a scientist: the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, awarded to college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, mathematics and engineering, and the James B. Willett Education Memorial Scholarship, a prestigious undergraduate award from the Universities Space Research Association (USRA).
Project One
VanWyngarden began her research journey as a first-year student in spring 2021. She was taking classes remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and was eager to start research. She decided to explore the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) website to see if any professors were in search of researchers.
Assistant Professor JJ Hermes was looking for help identifying newly-observed pulsating white dwarf stars to learn more about how white dwarfs work in their interiors; it would be VanWyngarden’s job to study them.
A white dwarf is a star in one of the last stages of its life cycle. Most stars, our Sun included, will eventually become white dwarfs. When a star is pulsating, it is going through periodic increases and decreases in the white dwarf’s brightness.
VanWyngarden spent the spring semester installing coding software on her laptop and learning more about the project. During the summer, she worked on cataloging the data from NASA’s TESS satellite to determine if any of the white dwarf stars were pulsating, which ones were pulsating, and what the period of their pulsations were.
Hermes had colleagues working on the same project, so once VanWyngarden finished cataloging her data, she and Hermes’ colleagues compared their catalogs and filled in any gaps. There were some pulsating white stars that VanWyngarden missed but also some that Hermes’ colleagues missed. In total, the two teams found over 70 stars, 10 of which VanWyngarden was the sole contributor.
VanWyngarden found white dwarves interesting, but she wasn’t ready to settle down and spend more time studying them. She wanted to branch out, to explore other topics of astronomy and other types of research.
“I was just so excited about all the potential research and astrophysics that I just thought everything was interesting,” VanWyngarden said.
Project Two
The following summer, VanWyngarden participated in a research internship at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where she studied intermediate-sized exoplanets.
Exoplanets are planets beyond our solar system. The first was detected in the mid-90s, and since then, researchers have discovered over 5,000. In 2017, astronomers lined up the exoplanets they had discovered and expected to see exoplanets of different sizes. Instead, they found many exoplanets that were about 1.3 times the size of Earth and many that were 2.6 times the size of Earth, but few in between. Astronomers named this phenomenon and the non-existence of intermediate-sized exoplanets “the radius valley,” VanWyngarden said.
Researchers theorized that the “radius valley” corresponds with both small rocky planets without atmospheres and to rocky planets that are surrounded by thick hydrogen-helium atmospheres. These atmospheres may be responsible for the size of a planet to double, she said.
For her research, VanWyngarden had to determine whether all planets form with an atmosphere and some lose theirs over time or if some planets never have an atmosphere at all.
To answer this question, she combined three mechanisms that might be able to reproduce the radius valley together and created a software that could be applied to planetary systems that contained small rocky planets and planets with big atmospheres.
By combining these mechanisms, VanWyngarden could determine if a proposed mechanism had the ability to reproduce a specific planetary system. She tested her software on over 200 planetary systems and found that all three models successfully reproduced what researchers had previously observed.
Researchers will need more data to be able to solve the “big mysteries” causing the radius valley, but with the software she created, they will be able to continue testing planetary systems, VanWyngarden said.
As a junior, VanWyngarden used her research on exoplanets and the radius valley to apply for the Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes college sophomores and juniors who are pursuing research in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering.
To apply, she wrote a three-page summary of her exoplanet research. She focused her summary on her research question, explaining what the radius valley is and what the popular theories regarding how the radius valley formed are. She also wrote about how she tested these theories with the models she created.
“[It was] not an easy task to do when trying to maintain scientific accuracy and thoroughness,” VanWyngarden said.
Project Three
As a junior, VanWyngarden studied abroad with the physics department’s Geneva program, where she worked at CERN, an intergovernmental organization that conducts a wide range of ongoing research in experimental particle physics.
Most of the research at CERN is done in the Large Hadron Collider, which is the world’s largest particle accelerator. The accelerator accelerates protons to 99 percent of the speed of light and smashes them together, which generates new particles. By studying these new particles, scientists can gain a better understanding of particle physics. This is made possible with detectors that are placed throughout the accelerator and determine the paths the particles travel.
VanWyngarden worked with Dr. Valentina Cairo, an experimental particle physicist at CERN, whose group explores four-dimensional particle tracking, which would allow researchers to not only study the position of the particles but also record the time when the particles hit the detectors.
Knowing the time and space coordinates of the particles would make it easier to separate the interesting particles out of the billions of particles that are produced in the collisions, VanWyngarden said.
The sensors used in the particle accelerator will one day need to be replaced because of radiation damage, and when that time comes, researchers will have the opportunity to install the four-dimensional detectors.
Four-dimensional particle tracking, however, is expensive, and CERN has yet to install any sensors capable of collecting time data. Cairo argued that the investment would be worthwhile, and it became VanWyngarden’s job to back up this argument.
“My research was an additional point in the ongoing body of research that shows that adding time is much more effective,” VanWyngarden said.
Last October, VanWyngarden applied for and won the 2023 USRA Distinguished Undergraduate Awards through an application process that asked about her research experiences, her plans for her future, and a statement detailing her activities, leadership, outreach, and engagement experiences.
“It was really, really validating to win because I know some other undergrads who have won in the past and who are now doing really cool research,” VanWyngarden said. “To be recognized as one of those students in that group was really an honor.”
VanWyngarden is planning to attend the University of Texas at Austin to pursue a PhD in astronomy, where she hopes to work with astronomers to study the formation and evolution of the first galaxies in the universe. She also plans to one day become a professor to not only continue doing research but to also mentor the next generation of scientists.