| | 1 | "How Gravitational Waves Pointed Us to the Origin of Gold" |
| | 2 | |
| | 3 | Two summers ago, the LIGO interferometers detected gravitational waves |
| | 4 | from coalescing neutron stars for the first time. (Neutron stars are |
| | 5 | the dense cores left over when massive stars explode at the end of |
| | 6 | their lives). This discovery initiated a frenzied search for a visual |
| | 7 | ‘afterglow’ to the merger using dozens of telescopes on the ground and |
| | 8 | in space. Within hours, fading blue light, unlike that ever seen |
| | 9 | before, was discovered from a galaxy 100 million light-years away. |
| | 10 | |
| | 11 | In this lecture, Brian Metzger will discuss the monumental importance |
| | 12 | of the discovery. One of the most exciting aspects was that it “made |
| | 13 | sense,” he says: The observations agreed with theoretical predictions |
| | 14 | he and colleagues made years earlier. From the debris of the merger, |
| | 15 | he and other scientists witnessed directly for the first time the |
| | 16 | creation of the heaviest elements in the universe, such as gold, |
| | 17 | silver and platinum. This talk will recount the amazing story of how |
| | 18 | gravitational waves pointed scientists to the origin of gold. |
| | 19 | |
| | 20 | About the Speaker |
| | 21 | |
| | 22 | Metzger is a theoretical astrophysicist. He was born and raised in |
| | 23 | Burlington, Iowa, received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of |
| | 24 | California, Berkeley, in 2009, and then held a NASA Einstein |
| | 25 | Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton University. In 2013, Metzger |
| | 26 | joined the faculty at Columbia University, where he is currently an |
| | 27 | associate professor of physics. He is also presently a visiting |
| | 28 | scholar at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational |
| | 29 | Astrophysics. Metzger received a Sloan Research Fellow in 2014 and is |
| | 30 | currently a Simons Fellow in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. |
| | 31 | Metzger’s contributions to neutron star mergers were recognized with |
| | 32 | the New Horizons Breakthrough Prize in Physics and the Bruno Rossi |
| | 33 | Prize of the American Astronomical Society. |
