REMINDER: Invitation to ICTP Colloquium by Prof. T. Beers on "the Astrophysics Origin of the Elements in the Periodic Table on Wednesday 4 September in Budinich Lecture Hall

[ICTP/infopoint - Tiziana Derni]

ICTP is pleased to announce that the forthcoming ICTP Colloquium by 
Professor Timothy Beers on "the Astrophysics Origin of the Elements in 
the Periodic Table" will take place on Wednesday 4 September 2019 at 
16:30 hrs, in the Budinich Lecture Hall, Leonardo Building, ICTP.
*
Biosketch: *Timothy Beers is the Grace-Rupley Professor of Physics at 
the University of Notre Dame, and a co-PI in the Physics Frontier Center 
JINA-CEE (Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics – Center for the 
Evolution of the Elements), funded by the US National Science 
Foundation. He is a former director of the US Kitt Peak National 
Observatory, and spent 25 years working as a Professor in Physics & 
Astronomy at Michigan State University. Beers is interested in the 
origin and evolution of the elements in the Universe, and the assembly 
of large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way, a field now referred to 
as Galactic Archaeology. For decades, Professor Beers has designed and 
executed large-scale surveys of stars in the Milky Way, efficiently 
sifting through literally millions of individual stars in order to find 
those objects that have recorded the chemical history of the Universe in 
their atmospheres. His work has led to the identification of a subset of 
the so-called carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars that exhibit a 
characteristic light-element signature (enhanced C, N, O, Na, Si, Mg), 
now recognized to be due to nucleosynthesis processes associated with 
the very first stars born in the Universe. Presently he is conducting a 
survey for so-called r-process-enhanced stars, which are metal-poor 
stars that exhibit over-abundances of elements produced by the rapid 
neutron-capture process, and place strong constraints on the origin of 
over half of the elements beyond iron in the Periodic Table.

*Abstract: *In this, the 150th Anniversary year of Mendeleyev’s Periodic 
Table, astronomers have pieced together plausible origin stories for 
most of the elements formed in nature. From the breakthrough 
observations of Paul Merrill (1952), which first demonstrated that 
essentially all elements beyond H and He were formed in stars, to the 
discovery of the astrophysical origin of the rapid neutron-capture 
elements in binary neutron star mergers (2017), I present a summary of 
our modern understanding of this fascinating history. I also highlight a 
number of remaining questions, and how astronomers and physicists are 
working to fill in our gaps in knowledge.

More information is available at http://indico.ictp.it/event/8984/

The Colloquium will be livestreamed at ictp.it/livestream

Light refreshments will be served after the talk.

You are all very warmly invited to attend.

With best regards,

Office of the Director, ICTP


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