BRP: labjournal

Colin Poppelaars & Sam Beckers

March 21, 2023

Abstract
• Timeline link (https://universiteit-leiden-group.monday.com/boards/1151621237)
• Project management(back up) https://trello.com/b/SNp2TcGv/project-management
• https://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph/new

Contents

1 Useful links/papers 2

2 Meetings 2
2.1 9-2-2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.1.1 Notes from meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 14-2-2023 - Groupmeeting - Oortkamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3 16-02-2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3.1 Vragen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.3.2 Notes from meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.4 21-3-2023 - Groupmeeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.5 23-2-2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.6 2-3-2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6.1 Vragen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.6.2 Meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.7 9-3-2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.8 16-3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.9 21-2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.9.1 Groupmeeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.9.2 Own meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Overview/Progress stuff 6
3.1 20-02-23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.2 27-02-23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.3 3-3-23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3.4 14-3: idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4 Stuff to write about 7

4.1 Understanding the data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 (Non) Gaussian distribution from LSQ slope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3 AMUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4 Thesis introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

5 RSSI meetings 11
5.1 Introduction talk - 5 Slides max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1
1 Useful links/papers
• https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009ApJ...702..884P/abstract [Dynamical Evolution of the
Young Stars in the Galactic Center: N-body Simulations of the S-Stars]
• https://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.4674.pdf [Monitoring stellar orbits around the Massive Black Hole in the
Galactic Center]

• https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4629 [Nobel Prize in Physics honors the

discovery of a supermassive compact object at the heart of the Milky Way]
• http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/N-body_simulations#Astrophysical_domains_and_timescales
[N-body Simulations]
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da_Wc_G9ms4 & https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2006/
[Zooming in on the heart of the Mikly Way]
• https://amuse.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/quantities_and_units.html [Quantities and
Units in AMUSE]
• https://home.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~spz/publ/Chapter2.pdf [Astrophysical Recipes: the Art of AMUSE
Chapter 2]
• https://github.com/spzwart/AMUSE-Tutorial/blob/master/running_an_Nbody_code.ipynb [AMUSE
N-body code tutorial]

2 Meetings
2.1 9-2-2023
2.1.1 Notes from meeting

• Amuse installeren
• Account maken op Alice
• Linux boot maken (Colin)

• Data krijgen we link van, download die(om data te gebruiken moet je Amuse gebruiken):
– Begin met data processen, zorgen dat het goed geïmporteerd is enzo. Dit kan ongeveer een maand duren.
Dit is de eerste stap
• 2e stap: plaatje(fig 6) namaken. De hint: het heeft iets met afstand en massa te maken
• Relativistisch zou lang duren(ong. 100 dagen)
• Elke dinsdag 13u tm 14u ongeveer wekelijksmeeting (nuttig om te zien hoe onderzoek verloopt, is in de Oort-
room, einde van 5e verdieping (gang) links)
• Begin met elke dag iets van Arxiv te lezen, lees alle titels, lees de auteurs, helpt met goed beeld te krijgen.
Lees artikelen, over S-sterren, galactic center, chaos etc. Zoek in Populair academisch niveau bronnen, e.g.
NewScientist over artikelen van punctuated chaos
• April is Simon in Japan

• Iemand om op terug te vallen:

– Promovendi Veronica en Martijn (rechts van Kaiserlounge)

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 – Veronica doet vergelijkbaar onderzoek, ze doet het vanuit een machine learning perspectief
* Nog wel contact zoeken met haar.
• 2 belangrijke dingen:
– Je wilt 1 vraag hebben, je moet beknopt uit kunnen leggen wat je doet en wat je leuk vind. Je moet op 3
niveaus kunnen uitleggen wat je doet, het leken niveau, het academische niveau, het million dollar niveau
– Je wilt gefascineerd kunnen nadenken over je onderwerp

2.2 14-2-2023 - Groupmeeting - Oortkamer

This meeting had a major subject the Lyapunov timescales, handy for our research!
• Transition between rapid and equal Lyapunov timescales is interesting.
• The perturbation must be transferred on the entire system. Reproduce the figure to see if there is a transition
between the slopes(lyapunov timescales).

• What happens at t=0?

• Paper: Anderson Application of Local Lyapunov Exponents to Maneuver Design and Navigation in the Three-
Body Problem
– Found article

2.3 16-02-2023
-Meeting met Simon om 14u, zijn kantoor.

2.3.1 Vragen
• AMUSE installeren op Mac lukt niet. ERROR: Failed building wheel for mpi4py

• Vorige keer hadden we het over Alice, maar we kunnen deze niet vinden, waar precies vinden we het en Wat is
Alice?
• Vertel over timeline opdracht en vraag over wat redelijk is om waar wanneer mee bezig te zijn, e.g. wanneer
scriptie beginnen te schrijven, wanneer willen we welk deel van het project af hebben?

2.3.2 Notes from meeting

Use ADS for papers, Arxiv is okay, but preferably ADS. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/
Read articles about the following:
• S-stars
• S-stars in the galactic center

• Dynamical systems
• Lyapunov timescale / chaos
• N-body simulations
• The galactic center

To do for next week:

• Make the curve and calculate the Lyapunov timescale of all 27 curves with a least squares fit

3
 • Calculate statistical ensemble of all stars :
– Determine the Lyapunov curves for all individual stars and then sum those up and divide by the size of the
population.
• Discuss results together

• Discuss w/ Simon and Veronica if we obtained it. If not, postpone meeting w/ a week.
In order to get AMUSE working on Mac OS:
• Contact Gijs from the research-group.

2.4 21-3-2023 - Groupmeeting

Was een erg leuke meeting! Geen notities gemaakt omdat er geen relevantie was voor ons project. Er waren een aantal
PhDers op bezoek, zij deden een verhaaltje over het onderzoek wat ze aan het houden zijn.

2.5 23-2-2023
Feedback:

• Plotjes maken is goed gelukt!

• We moeten de low bandpass filter begrijpen, zoek dit uit
• Sstar dx0 eta 24 is the measure the growth of the numerical error

Om aan te werken/work in progress:

• Bepaal de Lyapunov scale voor en na de ’big event’ rond 2876 yr. Kijk of er een verschil is, het lijkt wel zo te
zijn.
– Er is inderdaad een verschil!
– Voor het event is de geschatte Lyapunov timescale 332 yr.
– Na het event is het 617 yr.
• Get data per particle(star) rather than per entire population
– Dus een aparte lijst maken per ster, hierin d⃗x, d⃗v en d⃗
xv zetten.
* Doel is om Fig 9 te kunnen reproduceren uit paper.
* Contextueel: Je mag ⃗x met ⃗v optellen omdat dimensies niet erg boeien.
· Dit mag als je in N-body units gaat werken.
– Doe dit door de raw data files(amuse files) naar processed te verwerken. Gebruik hiervoor de scripts met
de bovenstaande ’tweak’.
* Dit kan erg lang duren, begin daarom met bijv. de eerste 100 datapunten. Zorg ervoor dat de hele
analyse werkt voor deze 100 en schaal dan steeds wat verder op tot we bij de volledige data aankomen.
– Check of de Lyapunov timescales hetzelfde zijn voor d⃗x met d⃗v, ze moeten als het goed is wel hetzelfde
zijn!
• Over plot met alle sterren: voeg black hole toe om te zien of er een verschil is van ongeveer 5 mangitudes (105 )

– Dit verschil zou dan komen door de massa van het zwarte gat, die is namelijk deze factor hoger in massa.

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2.6 2-3-2023
2.6.1 Vragen
• Low-bandpass filter: standard filter requirements: hoe kun je deze bepalen/nagaan theoretisch gezien?

• Hoe is de error propagation van de least squares fit gedaan?

– Zagen dat wanneer cov=True gedaan wordt dat dan de wortel van de diagonaal van de matrix niet de juiste
uncertainties oplevert, ze zijn namelijk extreem hoog.

2.6.2 Meeting

• Take out slope(from fit) from data, see if we can get distribution of Gaussian back , if not then we know that
the method of error propagation is incorrect, it is not allowed to assume Gaussian behaviour.
– In that case the error propagation needs to be done differently.
– About error calculation: Simon will get back to this.
• stay close to measurements (the raw files), don’t use derived data(the data with the keplerian orbital elements)

• Determine the Lyapunov timescale for dr . The keplerian orbital elements have varying due to the conversion
of Cartesian. We had some discussion about this and in principle x, y and z should have the same Lyapunov
timescales. We spoke about an example in a plane, in that case there is no z-movement, hence the timescale is
there infinite, rather than finite.
– In order to do so, make code to get dr
– Make figure 9 from paper
• about low-bandpass filter: filter requirements were set according to experimentation. The filter was applied s.t.
the structure is kept. (add this somewhere in thesis as method on getting the low-bandpass filter)
– Basically Simon chose these s.t. it was fitted best to the data, he wanted to keep the structure but also have
a line in the middle, this was just done by tweaking around until a nice curve resulted.
rv: go to unitless system, G=1, Mtot = 1, s.t. velocity and
• About units, the value_in part in code about getting d⃗
distance are same unit
– This is also known as N-body units. So convert all to N-body units , is easiest to explain, else you’d have
questions about why not everything is in N-body units.
• Explain the negative heat-capacity from gravity(good background information)
• Research Question: ’Why are these curves different?’ - Figure 9

2.7 9-3-2023
Own ideas:
• Determine the Lyapunov timescales for each individual object in the obtained data for the log10 (δr ).
– Then determine the sample mean of the data, as done in the _ensemble.py file

2.8 16-3
Miscommunication on when meeting was, so no meeting was held.

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2.9 21-2
2.9.1 Groupmeeting
2.9.2 Own meeting
• Initial eccentricity and semi-major axis.
– Scale the points according to an individual LSF from which we then subtract LSF of the BH.
– Then take the mean of this, which will give us some idea of which star reacts the most dramatic

3 Overview/Progress stuff
3.1 20-02-23
• We hebben S5 dx 10 eta 24 orbits.pkl in een dataframe gezet. Hieruit zien we dat bij elke rij dat de tijd een
array van 0 tot 10000 yr is, en dan 27 waardes voor elke ster van de keplerian elements. Maar bij sma zijn het
er 100000 lijsten van 27 waardes, bij de andere gewoon 27. Waarom zijn het 100000 waardes, en waarom de
gehele lijst uit 100000 rijen bestaat?
• We denken dat we de keplerian elements die hier worden gegeven voor elke S ster p om kunnen zetten naar
cartesian coordinates. Daarmee kunnen we dan de position space berekenen (δr = |xi − x0 |2 + |yi − y0 |2 ) en
dit plotten voor de time evolution van 0 tot 10000 yr. Is dit een goede aanpak of moeten we een andere dataset
gebruiken?

3.2 27-02-23
• s 2
∂tλ σa
σtλ = σa =
∂a a2

3.3 3-3-23
• Result on taking out the slope (see Meeting from 2-3-23) is that indeed we do not get back a Gaussian distribu-
tion, moreover for the cases of before and after the event we see different ’distributions’. When testing this with
an andersom_ksample test we get a low p-value back, implying that before and after the event have different
distributions.

– However, it seems to make sense that when taking individual fits on individual subsets and then comparing
the residuals of both via this test that we should get a low p-value. But consequently if we would just take
the large fit over all data and do the same thing than it should make sense that the distributions must be
near enough the same for the two sets.
* When testing the later we again are returned with a warning on the p-value being too low. Conse-
quently this implies that the data before and after the event are not the same, even though we used the
entire dataset and subtracted the fit from that. Thus before and after do not share the same distribution.
• Method for converting to N-body units:
– From nbody_system use nbody_to_si to create a converter. nbody_system.nbody_to_si takes total
mass of the system and length scale as arguments (Section 2.3.8 in Astrophyisical Recipes)
– From the data, get the mass of black hole + stars and sum all masses (in units MSun)
– Find the radius of the farthest orbit in the system (in units AU) and define this as the length scale (Question:
Should we update this value for every time step, as the farthest orbit might change due to the evolution of
the system? or can we just take the value from the first timestep and continue using this?)

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 – In our code, the x position of e.g. S1 in the canonical solution is called with p_c[0].x -> converting this to
N-body units can then be done like this: p_c_x_in_nbody_units = converter.to_nbody(p_c[0].x)
– Do the conversion for x, y, z, vx, vy, vz of every star in canonical and perturbed solution and calculate dr,
dv and drv with these variables in N-body units, s.t. we end up with dr, dv and drv in N-body units for
each star

3.4 14-3: idea

– Idea about the masses of the individual stars. It would make sense that not all stars have the same masses,
of course they vary, but during the close encounters between stars and the BH it would be important
between the stars. So maybe we can find differences if we make another simulations by including the
masses. Maybe this will give us a better understanding on the discrepancy between the black hole.
– Maybe we could also do another run but then halving the masses of the stars, s.t. all have mass of 10 M⊙ ,
to see if the discrepancy increases. If so then we know it has to do something with the masses.
– Idea about including the increase of S-stars by capture of the BH from close encounters binaries w/ BH. It
should increase the chaos more dramatically by adding another star, coming from outside the system

4 Stuff to write about

We’ve worked on a lot until now. We can start writing about some topics:

Topic Person
Understanding the data Colin
Lyapunov timescale (general) Sam
Butterworth low-bandpass filter Sam
Plotting phase-space distance Colin
Calculating Lyapunov timescale + error from LSQ fit Colin
Plotting SMA + Lyapunov timescales from average δa Sam
Statistical ensemble Lyapunov timescale δa Colin
(Non) Gaussian distribution from LSQ slope Colin
N-body unit converter Sam
Calculating dr, dv and drv for black hole + 27 stars Sam
AMUSE Colin

Table 1: Division of topics

4.1 Understanding the data

The data that we will be using during our research were kindly presented by Prof. Dr. Simon Portegies Zwart. He
performed two N-body simulations using the Brutus software from AMUSE(Astrophysical Multipurpose Software
Environment), one with no perturbation, labelled the canonical solution, which was purely based on Newtonian me-
chanics. The other set, known as the perturbation solution, included a small perturbation on the orbit of star S5 of
15 meters. This perturbation was chosen s.t. it would be well within the uncertainties of the orbit. Each dataset then
conisted of timesteps of 0.1 yr for 10 000 years starting from January 1st 2001 to 12001 yr for the entire ensemble,
black hole and S-stars. Moreover, each timestep then contained the Cartesian coordinates of position and velocity for
each individual object.

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4.2 (Non) Gaussian distribution from LSQ slope
4.3 AMUSE
AMUSE is a Python package designed to facilitate astrophysical simulations and data analysis. AMUSE is a unique
N-body simulation software for astrophysical applications because it allows for the integration of different physical
modules from different fields of astrophysics into a single simulation. This means that AMUSE can combine the
gravitational N-body simulations with other modules, such as hydrodynamics, stellar evolution, radiative transfer, and
others, to create a more comprehensive model of astrophysical phenomena. For this particular work Brutus was used.
In Brutus, the roundoff is controlled by extending the numerical precision and accuracy by reducing the tolerance in
the Bulirsch-Stoer integrator. hier een ref naar artikel Simon.

4.4 Thesis introduction

Chaotic systems are dynamic systems that exhibit
highly sensitive dependence on their initial conditions.
These systems thus change rapidly by the smallest per-
turbation on such a condition. In other words, small
differences in these conditions of the system can lead
to dramatically different outcomes each time over a pe-
riod of time. This phenomenon is sometimes referred
to as the butterfly effect and is a hallmark of chaotic
systems (Resler 2016). Chaotic systems are character-
ized by their unpredictable behavior, often displaying
random-looking patterns. Despite this seemingly ran-
dom behavior, chaotic systems are not completely ran-
dom, they follow deterministic rules that govern their
evolution over time. In fact, Newton’s laws of motion
are an exact example of this. To illustrate this, take the
Solar system containing the sun and all its planets, and
suppose we have a small perturbation on the trajectory
of a planet, let’s say Venus. If we would evolve this
system over time then the evolution is chaotic as the
planet either collides with the star or another planet, or
is to be ejected from the system. This depends of course
on the exact nature and size of the perturbation, as well
as the time scale considered within the simulation, but
the principle holds, Newton’s laws of motion govern
chaotic behavior from deterministic rules. Moreover, it
is important about what defines a system to be chaotic,
e.g. the Solar system is said to be practically stable if,
except for interlopers, the planets remain gravitation-
ally bound to the Sun and suffer no close encounters
between themselves or the Sun, over the main-sequence
lifetime of the Sun (Hayes 2008).
The chaotic behaviour within Newton’s laws can be
quantified by measuring the growth of the induced per-
turbation w.r.t. time hier citeren naar Punct. Choas
v/ Simon. In order to do so one can solve the equa-
tions of motion of the N-body system twice. In one
case without the perturbation, and in the other includ-
ing it. If the phase space distance between these two
solutions, that is, the difference, grows exponentially
we call the evolution of the system chaotic hier citeren
naar Punct. Choas v/ Simon. The timescale on which
a system is chaotic is characterized by the Lyapunov
timescale (Bezruchko and Smirnov 2010). The Lya-
punov timescale gives the limits of the predictability of
the system. This means that one can only be sure about,
for example the positions, within the system inside this
timescale/period for which the behavior is stable. If
we aim to predict beyond this timescale, i.e. the past
or future, then one cannot be sure due to the chaotic
behaviour that dominates the system beyond this time.
The Lyapunov timescale is defined as the time for the
distance between nearby trajectories of a system to in-
crease by a factor of e (Friedland and Metere 2017).
For reference, in the Solar system chaos is driven by
resonant overlap, however, from previous research on
Halley’s comet it was shown that its orbit exhibits ex-
ponential growth due to interactions with Jupiter and
Venus (Hayes 2008) with a corresponding Lyapunov
timescale of 300 years (Boekholt et al. 2016). Further-
more if a system would not be chaotic then its corre-
sponding Lyapunov timescale would be infinite, there
is no timescale on which the system changes dramati-
cally. In addition, the research on Halley hints towards
an event-driven process rather than the resonance driven
process. In that case it must be possible that chaos can
be driven by close encounters hier citeren naar Punct.
Choas v/ Simon. Consequently one could therefore
test this on other systems to see if this is indeed a cor-
rect possibility.
A system of great interest is the S-star cluster in the
Galactic center of the Milky Way. It includes many
eccentric and inclined orbits of stars near the supermas-
sive black hole in the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. An
S-star is defined as a star which is part of the system/star
cluster of stars which are the closest to the supermas-
sive black hole at the center of our own galaxy, they
are named ’Sxx’ by their position w.r.t. the black hole,
S2 is the closest star to Sag A and S3 the second clos-

8
est, in increasing order of distance respectively. The
stars are known for their high velocity (Sabha, N. et al.
2012). The star cluster is thus far known to have 28
stars with a defined orbit, including S2, which has a
completed full revolution since the monitoring from
(Gillessen et al. 2009) had started in 1992. Moreover
from this research (ibid.) estimate the mass of Sag A∗
to be (4.21 ± 0.06) × 106 M⊙ . The origin of the S-stars
so close to the supermassive black hole is an ongoing
puzzle (Griv 2009). The reason for this is that stars are
born as consequence of molecular cloud collapse as de-
scribed by the Jeans’ criteria (Jeans 1902), but molecu-
lar clouds are unable to collapse as they would be ripped
apart due to the tidal field of the supermassive black
hole. The tidal force from the black hole can unbind gas
clouds with densities below 107 cm−3 (1.6 pc/RG )1.8 ,
where RG is the Galactocentric radius (Morris 1993).
As opposed to this, clouds in the gas disk have densities
from 104 to 3 × 106 cm−3 (Genzel 1989)(Güsten 1989),
which is significantly lower, therefore the origin of the
S-stars must lay elsewhere. (Griv 2009)(Ghez et al.
2005).
Many ideas have been proposed on the formation of
the cluster, these can be characterized in three groups:
(1) the stars were formed near the black hole, requiring
that the local gas densities where much higher in the
recent past to enable star formation to counteract the
tidal field from the black hole, (Levin and Beloborodov
2003), the gaseous disk is no longer present as the
black hole has accreted it. Such a disk is able to form
by the tidal disruption of a molecular cloud by the black
hole. Alternatively (ibid.) argue that the disk could have
formed by gradually growing by the stockpiling of gas
from the nearby medium. (2) the stars were formed at
larger radii and underwent rapid inward migration (Ger-
hard 2000). (3) the stars are old but their appearance
has been changed due to interactions with the local en-
vironment, therefore they appear young, but they have
had sufficient time to migrate inward from their origin
(Morris 1993). Aside from these major group there
is another possibility to explain (some) of the S stars
within the cluster, namely through a three body inter-
action between a stellar binary and the black hole, this
is known as the Hill mechanism (Hills 1988), in this
a binary system encounters the black hole and conse-
quently due to this one of the stars is ejected, known
as a hypervelocity star, and the other is captured by
the black hole. From this mechanism it is potentially
possible that some of the S stars find their origin from
this.
The S-star cluster is of great importance as it can give
us a better insight of dynamics near the black hole, as
well as our understanding about dynamics in the center
of galaxies, where it is common that a supermassive
black hole is present hier een resultaat over dat het
vaak voorkomt dat er een SMBH in centers zitten.
In addition, the Galactic Center is a unique labo-
ratory for exploring the interactions of a supermassive
black hole with its environment. By mapping the or-
bits of the S-stars one is able to understand and find
the gravitational potential, created mainly by the black
hole, through which the stars move (Gillessen et al.
2009).
Moreover, understanding the chaos of this system
may provide better understanding in the sources of
gravitational waves as those are the result of the accel-
eration of massive objects. In that case one could possi-
bly identify gravitational waves incoming from our own
Galactic center.
Furthermore, the research can give us potentially
better understanding on the probability of a minor body
hitting Earth due to the chaotic behaviour within our
own Solar system hier citeren naar Punct. Choas v/
Simon.

References
Bezruchko, B.P. and D.A. Smirnov (2010). Extracting Knowledge From Time Series: An Introduction to Nonlinear
Empirical Modeling. Springer Series in Synergetics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. ISBN: 9783642126000. URL:
https://books.google.nl/books?id=li6JDAEACAAJ.
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5 RSSI meetings
5.1 Introduction talk - 5 Slides max
The talk should consist of the following:

• the scientific context of their BRP

– S-stars orbits plot from https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.7762 - figure 5 (left)
–

• the specific goal of their BRP - ’the goal’ slide

– Our first and foremost goal is to explain the discrepancy of the plot shown on this slide. As you can see
there is a discrepancy between the black hole line, which is in black, and the other lines for most of the
S-stars. It is not clear why this discrepancy exists. A hypothesis for this is that the black hole is around 5
orders of magnitude heavier than the stars, causing the phase space distance to be less. Another hypothesis
is that the discrepancy is the result of some factor of mass over distance, M/R.
– If we have found an explanation for the discrepancy than we will continue our research surrounding the
subject, but as of yet we don’t know what that might be, so it is a bit of a grey area where we can just
explore and discover new things.
• the approach we will follow - the ’So far’ slide

– So far we have been working on understanding our data, this is because they are not in regular files, they
are AMUSE files. AMUSE is a Python package designed to facilitate astrophysical simulations and data
analysis. We have these files as they were generated within AMUSE since you can also create N-body
simulations in it. Moreover, our supervisor is one of the founders of AMUSE, so obviously we HAVE to
use it.
– Every week we have meetings with our supervisor(s) in which we discuss what to tackle next. This is
usually done right on the spot as we all engage in the discussion, this results in a lot of free area to explore.
We personally like this as we really get the feeling that we can put our own mark on the project.
– Last week we managed to reconstruct the important plot we have to understand and explain. It is shown
on the slides. The next thing we will do is discuss it with our supervisor to see how we should continue
from here.

• the expected outcome

– We expect that the discrepancy for the phase space distance plot is a consequence of something Keplerian,
some mass over distance term, but as this is our hypothesis we can’t give a concrete answer on what we
can expect as an outcome. Perhaps the answer is very difficult, but it might also just be straightforward,
we don’t know, but that’s the art of doing research we think.

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