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Simons Foundation LecturesAuthor: Simons Foundation
The Simons Foundations mission is to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences.Co-founded in New York City by Jim and Marilyn Simons, the foundation exists to support basic or discovery-driven scientific research undertaken in the pursuit of understanding the phenomena of our world.The Simons Foundations support of science takes two forms: We support research by making grants to individual investigators and their projects through academic institutions, and, with the launch of the Flatiron Institute in 2016, we now conduct scientific research in-house, supporting teams of top computational scientists.Links:Simons Foundation: https://www.simonsfoundation.orgFlatiron Institute: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/flatiron/Simons Foundation Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SimonsFoundationFlatiron Institute Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FlatironInstitute/Simons Foundation Twitter: https://twitter.com/simonsfdnFlatiron Institute Twitter: https://twitter.com/flatironinst Language: en Genres: Education, Mathematics, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Brian Metzger - How Gravitational Waves Pointed Us to the Origin of Gold (February 5, 2020)
Monday, 9 November, 2026
Two summers ago, the LIGO interferometers detected gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars for the first time. (Neutron stars are the dense cores left over when massive stars explode at the end of their lives). This discovery initiated a frenzied search for a visual ‘afterglow’ to the merger using dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space. Within hours, fading blue light, unlike that ever seen before, was discovered from a galaxy 100 million light-years away.Uploaded 10-02-20In this lecture, Brian Metzger will discuss the monumental importance of the first detection of gravitational waves from coalescing neutron stars. The August 2017 discovery initiated a frenzied search for a visual ‘afterglow’ to the merger using dozens of telescopes on the ground and in space. Within hours, fading blue light, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, was discovered from a galaxy 100 million light-years away. From the debris of the merger, he and other scientists witnessed directly for the first time the creation of the heaviest elements in the universe, such as gold, silver and platinum. More details: https://www.simonsfoundation.org/event/how-gravitational-waves-pointed-us-to-the-origin-of-gold/
