Blakesley Burkhart

Magnetized turbulence is the cornerstone of astrophysical fluid dynamics and related processes such as star formation, cosmic ray propagation, accretion disk physics, and the structure of the interstellar medium. Richard Feynman aptly described turbulence as “the most important unsolved problem in classical physics” and I pursue solutions using statistical comparisons between observations and numerical simulations, with guidance from analytic theory. At Rutgers, my research group is investigating several outstanding issues related to the physics of turbulence using numerical simulations and analysis of observational data. In the next five years, we will apply turbulence statistics and neural networks we have developed to observational data to make inferences on the kinematics of gas and dust in galaxies. An important application of these measurements will be to study how turbulence affects the formation of stars across cosmic time.