Physics Program at SUNY Plattsburgh - Research

Dr. George Flynn holds a sample from Project Stardust.


Physics Student Ilona at Brookhaven Lab

Dr. George Flynn is currently the team leader of the Preliminary Examination Team doing Chemical Analysis for NASA's Project Stardust.

Project Stardust resulted in the capture and return to earth of comet particles. These particles could be more than 4 billion years old. Dr. George Flynn's research involves the chemical analysis of these particles, which will hopefully provide clues to the origin of the earth and other planets of the Solar System.

Dr. Flynn has a long history of studying the chemistry of meteorite and cosmic dust samples (as a graduate student he helped analyze some of the first samples brought back from the Moon), and is considered a world-class expert in this field. He often travels to Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island to conduct research, and takes students along to help him in his research (that's Ilona at Brookhaven Lab below left).

• Learn more about George Flynn's participation in Project Stardust
• Learn more about Ilona Sitnitsky

The Physics department maintains a 3-meter radio telescope operating at 4.2 GHz or 7.2 cm wavelength (it's an old satellite TV dish). Set up each day by faculty/students, it points directly to the sun at its zenith. Meanwhile, radio emission from both the sun and the sky has been monitored on a 24-hr/365 day schedule over more than a solar cycle.

During this time several intense solar flares have been recorded and analyzed. These are compared to the flare's behavior at other radio frequencies and especially in the X-ray band, using data downloaded from various international sites via the internet. Students are invited to collaborate on this monitoring activity, especially in the reduction of the data and its comparison to offsite data and solar theory.

We also have a 40 kHz receiver that monitors the atmospheric radio emission at very long wavelengths (7.5 km) during the night. Such phenomena as growlers and sprites, plus regular lightning storms can be observed, giving interesting information on the radio behavior of the upper atmosphere.