Posted on 11/08/2017 9:35:05 PM PST by nickcarraway
David Coulter was in Copenhagen when he got an email that catapulted him into the stars.
Coulter, 36, is a self-taught programmer. He spent 10 years in industry jobs, then left for graduate studies in astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, which operates Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton.
“I just wanted to learn about outer space,” he said.
He picked the right place.
The second-year grad student found himself on a team that was the first to take images of neutron stars merging, beating a group from Harvard, perhaps explaining the origin of metals such as gold and uranium.
“A quarter of the world’s astronomers were on the chase,” he said, adding, “You can do great things with small telescopes still.”
He shared the story with more than 200 people at the Santa Cruz New Tech MeetUp Wednesday night at Cruzio.
The day was Aug. 17. Coulter had just attended a lecture in Copenhagen on gravitational waves where the speaker said a merger of neutron stars was unlikely.
Then he got an email saying signals indicated 100 percent likelihood of a neutron star merger, which he described as “elements being thrown out in space, like paint balls being shot.”
Coulter said he implored his adviser to break away from his date in Copenhagen to come to work.
“We had a trackable area of the sky to look for,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at santacruzsentinel.com ...
Though neutron stars typically have a radius on the order of 10 kilometres (6.2 miles), they can have masses of about twice that of the Sun.
They result from the supernova explosion of a massive star, combined with gravitational collapse, that compresses the core past the white dwarf star density to that of atomic nuclei.
Once formed, they no longer actively generate heat, and cool over time; however, they may still evolve further through collision or accretion. ...”
“A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon of its material would have a mass ... about 900 times [that of] the Great Pyramid of Giza.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
If you enjoy reading about things like this, you would love being a part of REASONS TO BELIEVE! http://www.reasons.org/ We have been on two cruises with this group. It is a group of scholars, scientists, etc. who are also strong Christians.
I have it on great authority that God is not offended when we learn how He does it/did it ...
Provided, of course, we give credit where its due, and don't somehow claim for ourselves the glory which properly belongs Elsewhere.
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