an astro-chat with

Professor Don Kurtz

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Lincoln, UK

Friday, 21 January 2022

7:00-8:00 pm

Live online

Book a place

Stars more than 10 times the mass of the Sun through their short lives fuse hydrogen to helium, helium to carbon, then heavier and heavier elements until their cores are made mostly of Iron, the most tightly packed atomic nucleus. This leads to the “Iron-catastrophe” with the explosion of the entire star as a stupendous supernova. The remnant is often a neutron star, predicted in 1933 and discovered in 1967. Nobel prizes and more came over the following years and decades, some with controversy. In this AstroChat we will discuss stars with twice the mass of the Sun, but only 20 km in diameter, with densities of billions of tons per cubic centimetre, spinning insanely quickly – some faster than 700 times per second! And we’ll talk about the people involved in the amazing discovery and scientific understanding of the pulsars.

This is our 7th Astro-Chat with our distinguished guest Professor Don Kurtz. The session will include a brief illustrated introduction followed by questions and answers. Members of the public will be able to ask questions in the live-chat. The event is hosted by Professor Andrei Zvelindovsky, Head of the School of Maths & Physics at the University of Lincoln, UK.