2021
KICP colloquium: Tongyan Lin ( UC San Diego)
3:30–4:30 pm ERC 161
Tongyan Lin ( UC San Diego) “14 billion years in the life of a dark matter particle”
KICP Seminar: Sophie Schroeder (Niels Bohr Institute)
12:00–1:00 pm ERC 401
Sophie Schroeder (Niels Bohr Institute) “Open questions in formation of compact binary star systems”
A&A Colloquium: Cole Miller (University of Maryland)
3:30–4:30 pm ERC 161
A NICER path to neutron star radii
Precise and reliable measurements of neutron star radii are essential to our understanding of cold, catalyzed matter beyond nuclear saturation density. Recently, NASA’s Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) satellite has provided high-quality data sets that have yielded measurements of the mass (M=1.44+-0.15 Msun) and radius (R=13+1.2-1.0 km) of the 206 Hz pulsar PSR J0030+0451, and of the radius (R=13.7+2.6-1.5 km) of the M=2.08+-0.07 Msun, 346 Hz pulsar PSR J0740+6620. I will discuss our group’s work on these pulsars and will in particular discuss the assumptions that have gone into our analyses, to help the assessment of our results. I will also discuss the implications of our results for the properties of the dense matter in the cores of neutron stars.
A&A seminar: Ani Chiti (KICP) & Rebecca Deising (UChicago)
12:00–1:00 pm ERC 401
This coming Tuesday we will have our first science talks in the Tuesday Lunch series.
KICP postdocs symposium
3:30–4:30 pm ERC 161
We will have a postdoc jamboree to celebrate KICP and kick off our in person talks. This will consist of four 10+5 minutes talks. Please join us.
Particle Theory Seminar: Austin Joyce (UChicago)
1:30–2:30 pm MCP 201
Particle Theory Seminar: Austin Joyce, UChicago, “Can you stretch a black hole?”
A&A Colloquium: Leslie Rogers (University of Chicago)
3:30–4:30 pm ERC 161
Glimpsing the Compositions of Sub-Neptune-Size Worlds
Sub-Neptune and super-Earth-size planets are a new category of astrophysical objects. Though absent from the Solar System, exoplanet transit, radial velocity, and microlensing surveys have revealed that they are a dominant outcome of planet formation found in abundance around other stars. The nature of these planets is not well understood. In the sub-Neptune size range a large variety of planet bulk compositions are a priori possible, including terrestrial super-Earths, mini-Neptunes with hydrogen-helium envelopes, and water-worlds with several tens of percent water by mass. In this talk, I will present recent results from my group aimed at disentangling the relative contributions from various compositional scenarios to the observed population of planets and understanding the nature and origin of these enigmatic sub-Neptune-size worlds.
Astronomy & Astrophysics 1st Year Orientation
Through September 24, 2021
Open group seminar: Yuankang Liu, ETH Zurich
3:00–4:00 pm Zoom
Yuankang Liu, ETH Zurich, “A Sub-grid Turbulent Dynamo Model for Cosmic Magnetism”