In a lecture to accompany the "Here, There, Everywhere" NASA traveling exhibit that is currently on display in the David Adamany Undergraduate Library (UGL), Wayne State University astronomer Ed Cackett will deliver a lecture titled "Neutron Stars: Humanity in a Sugar Cube," 2:30 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 17, in the Community Room of the UGL on the main campus of Wayne State University.
Cackett will discuss neutron stars, a type of stellar remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a supernova event. Neutron stars and black holes are among the most exotic objects in the universe; studying neutron stars and black holes gives us access to exotic realms that we can't explore on Earth. A lump of neutron star matter the size of a sugar cube would weigh as much as all humanity, and the stars have magnetic fields a trillion times Earth's. Since we can't reproduce such conditions in laboratories, we have to observe neutron stars with telescopes to figure out their properties.
Cackett is an assistant professor in Wayne State's physics and astronomy departments. He received his Ph.D. from the University of St Andrews in the United Kingdom and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan and University of Cambridge, before joining the Wayne State University faculty in 2012. He recently was awarded a National Science Foundation Early Career Development Award, the agency's most prestigious award for junior faculty, for a project that worked to understand the process of accretion in neutron stars.
The lecture is free and open to the public, and the "Here, There, Everywhere" exhibit will be on display through September. For more information, contact Wayne State University Librarian Jim Van Loon at cv3901@wayne.edu
The Wayne State University Library System consists of the university's six libraries: The David Adamany Undergraduate Library, the Purdy/Kresge Library, the Shiffman Medical Library, the Arthur Neef Law Library, the Science and Engineering Library, and the Reuther Library and the School for Library and Information Science.
Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 28,000 students.