Event Host: Department of Astronomy and Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP)
Short Description: Christopher S. Kochanek, Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of astronomy, has been investigating the secrets of the universe for three decades: its geometry, galaxy properties and supermassive black holes.
All stars die. Massive stars, ten or more times larger than our Sun, can die with a bang or a whimper. The bang — a supernova, or exploding star — leaves behind a neutron star, the size of Columbus and the mass of our Sun. But, don’t dismiss the whimpers — no dramatic explosion, but almost certainly how black holes are created. Searching for these whimpers for a decade, he appears to have caught a black hole in formation.
Christopher S. Kochanek, Ohio Eminent Scholar and professor of astronomy, has been investigating the secrets of the universe for three decades: its geometry, galaxy properties and supermassive black holes. For the past decade, he’s used the world’s largest optical telescope to narrow his focus to: massive stars behaving badly, the lives and deaths of stars more than ten times the mass of our Sun. His lecture explains ALL the reasons we should be happy Earth does not orbit such a star:
Free and open to the public. For more information visit the Department of Astronomy.
