Jan. 24, 2018
Dr. Eliot Quataert (University of California, Berkeley)
Recently one third of the world's astronomers became involved in observing a distant and violent event, when two neutron stars collided and exploded. This represented the first time in history that a cosmic event was observed with both gravity waves and light -- the birth of "multi-messenger astronomy." Dr. Quataert gives a non-technical history of how we are now able to find gravity waves, what happens during such a merger, and why we now believe that much of the gold, platinum, uranium and other heavy elements in the universe is assembled in such mergers.