The David and Edith Harris Physics Colloquium Series

The Pappalardo Distinguished Lecture in Physics

Speaker: Eliot Quataert | UC Berkeley

"Neutron Star Mergers, Gravitational Waves and the Origin of the Elements"

The discovery of compact object mergers by LIGO has opened up a new window into the Universe's most exotic objects, neutron stars and black holes. Maximizing the scientific return of this new window requires connecting gravitational wave detections to the wealth of electromagnetic data on similar sources. I will describe the remarkable progress in this direction with the first neutron star merger detected in August 2017, emphasizing the simple underlying physics behind these discoveries. I will also look ahead to some of the diversity that may be expected in the joint electromagnetic-gravitational wave sky.

BIO: Eliot Quataert is a Professor of Astronomy and Physics at UC Berkeley and is currently the Chair of the Astronomy department and Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center. He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT. Quataert is an astrophysics theorist who works on a wide range of problems, including stars and black holes, plasma astrophysics, and how galaxies form.  He has received a number of national awards for his research, including the Warner Prize of the AAS, the Packard Fellowship, a Simons Investigator award from the Simons Foundation, and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Quataert is also a highly regarded teacher and public lecturer. 

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The lecture will take place in 10-250, starting at 4pm.
Pre-Colloquium Social in room 4-349 will begin at 3:30pm, refreshments will be served.

For questions, contact Ryan Higgins at higginsr@mit.edu

See future Physics Colloquium lectures at: https://web.mit.edu/physics/events/colloquia.html