11:00 am
In-Person and Virtual Kersten Physics Teaching Center, Room 106
Join us for a free public lecture series celebrating 50 Years of Discovery at the Enrico Fermi Institute of UChicago. Attendees can join in person or virtually.
Prof. Andy Davis presents: 50 Years of Discovery at the Birthplace of Cosmochemistry
The field of cosmochemistry got its start at the University of Chicago, when some of the remarkable scientists who worked here on the Manhattan Project turned their attention to isotopes and their uses in understanding natural processes in our Solar System and beyond. A couple of the key EFI discoveries in the past 50 years include the following. (1) Meteorites and Mars have oxygen isotopic compositions different from those on Earth; the Sun is significantly different from all measured rocky bodies in the Solar System. (2) Actual grains of stardust, mostly silicon carbide and graphite, can be separated from meteorites. The wide range of isotopic compositions of individual grains shows that each grain came from a single dying low-mass star, maybe twice the mass of the Sun, or a massive star that exploded as a supernova. I’ll discuss these discoveries and more.