Seventeen-year-old Jack Terrell is a senior at Sewickley Academy, but he has his sights set far beyond high school.
“Exploring the cosmos and exploring the planets, I’ve always dreamed of seeing these planets for myself,” said Terrell, who wishes to one day earn a Ph.D. in theoretical physics with a specialization in astrophysics.
It’s a goal he has already made significant progress working toward. He was a participant in the 2023 Pittsburgh Regional Science & Engineering Fair and was a finalist in the 2023 International Science & Engineering Fair, which was held in May in Dallas. At ISEF, Terrell won a second place special award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society for his project titled “Application of Luminosity Modulus in Exoplanet Transits.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying I’m using a way of finding exoplanets — the transit method — to find something special about those planets,” Terrell said.
He explained further that the transit method is a way of measuring the size of exoplanets, i.e., a planet located outside of our solar system, by determining how much light the planet blocks when it is in front of a star. However, for planets with relatively high temperatures — especially larger, Jupiter-like worlds residing close to their stars — they emit their own light as well, which can impact luminosity change and make it difficult to measure.
Terrell said that through his research, he was able to come up with his own equation to account for that factor. He said that once the size of exoplanets are determined, a factor called albedo, or the measure of how much solar radiation a planet’s surface reflects, can be used to determine which exoplanets may be most like Earth.
While Terrell said he didn’t have a large enough dataset to identify any Earth-like exoplanets, he did identify one with a high albedo similar to Venus — a body he said could be the first ever super-Venus class exoplanet.
As he finishes high school, Terrell is looking to apply to some of the nation’s top physics programs in the hopes that one day he can contribute to discovering a unified theory of physics and a way to quantize gravity.
“One of the biggest issues in the physics world today is there is no reliable way to account for gravity,” Terrell said. “There’s not really a force-carry particle we can attribute it to. General relativity struggles to look at gravity in a quantizable way. I want to find that because if we can quantize gravity, we can really do anything.”
Join us at The Assembly in Bloomfield on Sept. 20 to honor our Fire Awards recipients and celebrate innovation, resilience and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
