Northwestern Events Calendar

May
4
2018

Ryan Chornock : GW170817: A Golden Neutron Star Merger

When: Friday, May 4, 2018
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, L211, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Yassaman   (847) 491-7650

Group: Physics and Astronomy Colloquia

Category: Academic

Description:

Title: GW170817: A Golden Neutron Star Merger

Speaker:Ryan Chornock, Ohio University 

Abstract: On August 17th of last year, the Advanced LIGO/VIRGO gravitational wave observatories detected their first binary neutron star merger. The discovery of an associated electromagnetic counterpart has been a milestone event in astronomy because it definitively answers several outstanding questions. I will discuss some of the astrophysical implications that result from making this connection and what we can learn about the merger process from the electromagnetic source, with a focus on what can be gleaned from studies of the thermal component responsible for the optical and near-infrared emission at early times. In particular, observations of this "kilonova" have shown that the merger was a major site of the r-process nucleosynthesis that produces many of the heavy elements in the universe, including gold, platinum, and uranium.

Host: Tchekhovskoy

Speaker Schedule

Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, colloquium

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