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March Main Meeting – We are all made of stardust but gold, silver and platinum are neutron stardust’
March 24, 2022 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
All current meetings are online for paid Society members only who will receive their meeting invites by email.
Guests can attend one meeting for free and are then encouraged to join. If you’d like to attend this online presentation please email info@nanaimoastronomy.com
We’re very happy to have Dr JJ Eldridge presenting to us from New Zealand !
Associate Professor and the current academic head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland.
Presentation
‘We are all made of stardust
but gold, silver and platinum are neutron stardust’
Brief :
One of the deepest facts that astrophysics reveals is that the elements important for life to exist arise from the lives and death of stars. In this presentation I will describe the different stars that produce different elements. I will cover the surprizing result that single stars like our Sun would produce different elements if they were in a binary stars system. I will also descrbie how our understanding of the source of elements like gold, silver and platinum chanced in 2017 when we witnessed and event that finally produced these elements.
Bio :
Dr JJ Eldridge is currently an Associate Professor and the current academic head of the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland. Her general research concerns the lives and deaths of stars, from those in our own Galaxy to those in galaxies at the edge of the observable Universe. Particularly the effects of binary interactions on the lives of binary stars and how these change the appearance of galaxies, alter the rates of different types of supernovae and gravitational wave events.