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Fig. 1:
Sir Harrie Massey medal
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Fig. 2:
Eugene Churazov
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The official citation acknowledges the role of Eugene Churazov in resolving a
conundrum, which baffled the astrophysical community for a quarter century: why
the hot gas in clusters of galaxies that have a short radiative cooling time was
actually not cooling and forming stars at the predicted rates. Churazov
developed key theoretical insights and applied these to ROSAT, XMM-Newton, and
Chandra observations to show that the buoyant plasma bubbles, produced by
outbursts from supermassive black holes, could be used to measure the mechanical
energy output from radiatively inefficient accretion onto these black holes. He
also showed that the bulk of the AGN power is captured within the cooling cores
of cluster atmospheres. This is sufficient to re-heat the cooling gas and,
hence, explain the relatively small amounts of star formation and cool gas that
is observed in the hot gas-rich systems from the early type galaxies to the rich
galaxy clusters.
The COSPAR Massey Award honors the memory of Sir Harrie Massey, FRS, past
Physical Secretary of the Royal Society and past member of the COSPAR Bureau.
The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the development of space
research, interpreted in the widest sense, in which a leadership role is of
particular importance. The award is open to candidates from any country and
laureates receive a Gold medal and a prize of 500 guineas.
COSPAR Massey Award
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