SKEPTICS: THIS SAT. Karen D Camarda. NEUTRON STARS! AUG, 13, 7PM AT PERKINS-
| From: | cole m. |
| Sent on: | Tuesday, August 9, 2011, 9:27 PM |
MIDWEST SKEPTICS SOCIETY: Karen D Camarda. NEUTRON STARS!
This should be an interesting and educational night. JOIN US! There is always fun afterwards at Callahan's. Cole Morgan [masked]
TO RSVP, ADDRESS AND MORE INFO ABOUT THIS GROUP GO TO: http://www.meetup.com/skeptics-137/
Neutron stars are ancient remnants of stars that have reached the end of their evolutionary journey through space and time.
These interesting objects are born from once-large stars that grew to four to eight times the size of our own sun before exploding in catastrophic supernovae. After such an explosion blows a star's outer layers into space, the core remains—but it no longer produces nuclear fusion. With no outward pressure from fusion to counterbalance gravity's inward pull, the star condenses and collapses in upon itself.
Despite their small diameters—about 12.5 miles (20 kilometers)—neutron stars boast nearly 1.5 times the mass of our sun, and are thus incredibly dense. Just a sugar cube of neutron star matter would weigh about one hundred million tons on Earth.
A neutron star's almost incomprehensible density causes protons and electrons to combine into neutrons—the process that gives such stars their name. The composition of their cores is unknown, but they may consist of a neutron superfluid or some unknown state of matter.
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Dr. Karen Camarda is an Associate Professor of Physics & Astronomy at
Washburn University. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the
University of Illinois in 1998. Her research interests lie primarily in
the field of numerical relativity, with occasional forays into parallel
computing projects in other fields. The current focus of her research is
computer simulations of rapidly rotating neutron stars, with the goal of
understanding the effect of magnetic fields on their stability.
Washburn University. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the
University of Illinois in 1998. Her research interests lie primarily in
the field of numerical relativity, with occasional forays into parallel
computing projects in other fields. The current focus of her research is
computer simulations of rapidly rotating neutron stars, with the goal of
understanding the effect of magnetic fields on their stability.
She will talk about what neutron stars are, how they were discovered, and what wecan learn from them.
Cole Morgan [address removed] [masked]