Lunchtime Talk: Will Neutron Stars Explain the Missing Energy in our Galaxy?
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm Tuesday, Dec. 2
Since forty years, mysterious sources have been known to pour their gamma-ray energy into our Galaxy, but remained largely unknown in nature.
Only one of them,”GEMINGA”, was finally understood as a new type of neutron star after a 20-year astronomical chase in space.
In the last year or so, however, an Italian gamma-ray astronomy mission and a NASA one, dedicated to Fermi, are solving the riddle, suggesting an extraordinary proliferation of these special neutron stars, as massive as black holes, but so far even more invisible. The talk will show these N.S.s (now known as “gamstars”) in action and will, eventually, reveal the origin of the name of their protoype, GEMINGA.
Moderator:
Ruth Berry, Producer/Director, Big Island Pictures (Germany)
Guest Speaker:
Giovanni Bignami, Astronomer, Italian Space Agency (Italy)