Eric Perlman, Ph.D.

Professor | Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences Florida Tech

  • Melbourne FL

Dr. Perlman is an observational astrophysicist whose research concentrates on the nuclei of galaxies.

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New Images from Euclid Telescope Offer Powerful Complement to Hubble, JWST

Five new images from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid space telescope mission continue to further our exploration of the “Dark Universe,” according to Florida Tech observational astrophysicist Eric Perlman. With help from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Euclid’s mission is to grow our understanding of “dark matter” so scientists can precisely chart its presence in the universe. Photo Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA Euclid returned its first five images in November 2023 after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida – just minutes from the Florida Tech campus – that summer. Now astronomers and scientists are examining a new batch released in late May. The five new images feature a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy, clusters of hundreds of galaxies and more stunning sights. “These are magnificent images which showcase the power of the Euclid telescope,” said Perlman, who is a professor at Florida Tech’s Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences. “The view they show of these objects is strikingly different from what other observatories, in particular Hubble and JWST, show.” NASA predicts that by 2030, Euclid will create a cosmic map that covers almost a third of the sky, thanks to the field of view that is wider than both the Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Photo Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA Dr. Perlman is available to discuss the new images, how and why they differ from previous images, and what this means for our understanding of dark matter.

Eric Perlman, Ph.D.

Answers

How do these Euclid images connect to your research?
Eric Perlman, Ph.D.

My own research is on the centers of galaxies, particularly their central black holes. Most supermassive black holes don’t do very much. Like the one in the center of our galaxy, they sit there, taking in matter when it gets too close, but they don’t take in much matter or have bright accretion flows because matter isn’t being forced inside.One of the questions I’m most interested in is, what causes a black hole to become active, take in lots of material and have bright accretion flows? We can only study that with the kinds of multi-scale views of a galaxy that Euclid is providing. I also study jets: large and energetic flows of matter coming out of the centers of galaxies that are actively accreting. Euclid’s wide-angle view is going to give us an appreciation of their structure and impact on surrounding matter in new ways we’ve never been able to look at before.

How do these new Euclid images change our understanding of dark matter and dark energy?
Eric Perlman, Ph.D.

What these images do is to give us a view of both dark matter and dark energy (the term for the unknown source of the universe’s expansion) that is much broader scale than anything we’ve ever seen. Dark matter, for example, interacts with normal matter via gravity alone. It emits no light. So, the only way we can see it is by looking at the distribution of matter and observing what it does to light via gravity. If we do this on both the large and small scales, we look at how it clumps together, and maybe we’ll be able to discover if that is different from normal matter. Dark energy is also difficult to study. It seems to affect how the expansion of the universe changes with time, but we have no idea what it is, or how it has evolved in history. This large-scale, 3D view will help us try to understand how dark energy has evolved, whether it has changed with time, and what the relationship of dark energy and dark matter may be.

How do these images and Euclid itself compare to the James Webb Space Telescope?
Eric Perlman, Ph.D.

What’s different about these images is their wide-angle view, as well as the fact that they are in the optical and near-infrared. JWST is specifically an infrared telescope. Any image you see from JWST is in a different band – a significantly longer wavelength – so you’re looking more through the dust and at cooler stars or gas. Euclid would show you the larger scale distribution of the stuff, and of course if the stars or gas is warmer. And then, there’s the wide-angle versus very deep and fine-scale – take any image, and those two views give you widely different illustrations. It’s the same thing here. Euclid also has a second instrument that allows it to take low-resolution spectra of the sky, so it will be able to give us not just a wide-angle view, but a wide-angle, 3D view, measuring also the distance of objects on a large scale.

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Areas of Expertise

James Webb Space Telescope
Galactic Activity
Galactic Nuclei
Astrophysics
Black Holes
Astronomy

About

Dr. Eric Perlman is an observational astrophysicist whose research concentrates on the nuclei of galaxies, their physics and evolution, particularly those in which the central black hole has a large rate of accretion and is abnormally active (the so-called active galactic nuclei, or AGN).

He also specializes in the structure and physics of high-velocity outflows from compact objects and AGN, particularly, jets. He has a strong interest in clusters of galaxies, galactic activity in clusters and observational cosmology. He takes a multiwaveband approach to these subjects, and has worked in virtually every energy range from the radio through gamma-rays.

Dr. Perlman has, in the process of his research, received over $2 million in grants, including two 5-year NASA Long-Term Space Astrophysics Program grants, a 3-year NSF grant, and multiple smaller grants for observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory.

He is a member of the AGN science team for CanariCam, a first-light instrument for the Gran Telescopio Canarias, currently the largest ground-based optical/infrared telescope.

Dr. Perlman came to Florida Tech in 2007 after postdoctoral fellowships at Goddard Space Flight Center and the Space Telescope Science Institute, as well as research staff and research faculty positions at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He maintains a large research group that includes a postdoctoral fellow as well as typically 3-4 graduate students and an equal number of undergraduate research assistants.

In his spare time, he enjoys chess, singing, Scrabble, playing with his kids, reading, photography and working out.

Research Focus

A Multifaceted Astrophysicist

Dr. Perlman's research spans several areas of astrophysics, and my contributions in each have been strong, well cited and diverse. His main area of expertise is in the field of high-energy astrophysics, specifically the physics of active galaxies, where he has made important contributions to our knowledge of jets, the high-energy, relativistic flows that emerge from the central regions of the most powerful AGN. He has made critical contributions to the physical processes responsible for their emission, their response to stimuli and variability, and also made available a database of these objects.

He has also done ground-breaking work on cosmology, including work at the very edge of physics and astrophysics, laying out the geometry and framework for tests of quantum gravity using astronomical observations of the most distant quasars, and on the distribution of clusters of galaxies in the local and distant universe. He parlayed these important accomplishments into two large chapters in graduate-level textbooks on extragalactic astrophysics, published during the last two years.

Media Assets

Media Appearances

Are We There Yet? (space podcast)

WMFE Orlando  radio

2022-07-12

The first images from the James Webb Space Telescope are out, revealing thousands of ancient galaxies, nebulae, and a close-up look at a planet outside our own solar system.
The images are stunning and only just the beginning. We’ll break down this first batch of images with Florida Institute of Technology’s Eric Perlman and talk about what’s to come from this brand new observatory in the sky.

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Impact of black hole winds, radiation examined in new study

Phys.org  online

2022-03-31

"The impact of AGN outflows on the surface habitability of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way," published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is a research paper by the team of astrobiologist Manasvi Lingam and astrophysicist Eric Perlman from Florida Tech's Department of Aerospace, Physics and Space Sciences, as well as researchers from the University of Rome, University of Maryland and Goddard Space Flight Center.

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James Webb Space Telescope reaches orbit location, will start to unlock mysteries of the universe

WESH  

2022-01-24

“These are galaxies and stars that we are seeing from 14 billion years ago. So it’s mind-blowing,” said Eric Perlman of Florida Tech.

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Education

University of Colorado Boulder

Ph.D.

Astrophysics

1994

Occidental College

A.B.

Physics

1989

Social

Selected Articles

Probing Spacetime Foam with Extragalactic Sources of High-Energy Photons

arXiv:2205.12852

2022

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The impact of AGN outflows on the surface habitability of terrestrial planets in the Milky Way Get access Arrow

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

2022

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New Tests of Milli-lensing in the Blazar PKS 1413 + 135

The Astrophysical Journal

2022

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Affiliations

  • International X-ray Observatory Science Associates : Member
  • AAS Working Group on Professional-Amateur Collaboration : Member
  • CanariCam Science Team : Member