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The Variable High Energy Sky - Dr. Michael Nowak, Washington University
White dwarfs and neutron stars are the final stages of Sun-like stars and massive stars. They are very highly compressed by their own gravity. Stars with roughly the mass of the Sun are squeezed about a million times, down to the size of the Earth, to form white dwarf stars. Stars much more massive than the Sun are squeezed down even more, to the size of cities. Even the most massive black holes in the Universe, with the mass of a Dwarf Galaxy, have event horizons that are no bigger than the distance to the outer planets in our solar system. This means that with very rare exception, we cannot image these systems. This is especially true when we study these systems in X-rays, which are difficult to focus. But what we can do instead is perform very precise measurements of variability, on time scales as short as milliseconds or even shorter, and that lets us infer properties of these systems on size scales that we otherwise cannot resolve. Much of Dr. Nowak’s work revolves around studying the variability in these systems. He will present a number of examples from several decades of research, discussing what these observations imply for these systems.
Michael Nowak is a Research Professor in the Dept. of Physics at Washington University in St. Louis, and is the Associate Director at the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences. Event co-sponsored by St. Louis Astronomical Society and NASA MO Space Grant Consortium at Washington University. Program is also available via Zoom. Send request to [email protected] to receive Zoom link.
Event Links
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3116780-0
