Personal Research

I am a professor at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Below are links to some of the more serious research I do, all explained in laymen terms. (A friend of mine always says, if you cannot explain your research in laymen terms, you probably don't understand what you're doing!).

• Very Luminous Stars (and other astrophysical objects)
• Passing the Eddington limit without getting a ticket: A detailed summary of the theory of porous atmospheres and how they can explain the existance of super-Eddington objects.


• Cosmic Rays, their effect on the Terrestrial Climate, Global Warming, etc.
  • The Milky Way's Spiral Arms and Ice Ages on Earth: A detailed summary of the evidence linking between passages of the Solar system through the Milky Way spiral arm, and the appearance of ice age epochs on Earth. This including the cosmic ray flux reconstruction from iron meteorites.
  • The Cosmic Ray / CO₂ / Climate Debate: During 2003/04, a debate raged over the question of whether CO₂ is the main climate driver over geological time scales, or whether it is the cosmic rays which are dominent. Here you'll find the attacks and rebuttels.
  • Cosmic Rays and Climate: A general review on the development of our understanding of the link between cosmic rays flux variations and climate.
  • Natural or Anthropogenic? Which mechanism is responsible for global warming over the 20^th century?
  • A primer on Climate Sensitivity, why global circulation models cannot predict it, and why empirical evidence suggests it is small.
  • Using the Oceans as a Calorimeter, one can quantify the solar climate link and establish that an amplification mechanism (such as the cosmic ray climate link) must exist. Anyone thinking that only the solar irradiance variations are important (e.g., the IPCC scientists) should read this.
    
• Related research:
  • Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle - Summary of the above research from a geochemist's point of view, that of my colleague Prof. Jan Veizer.