Events

Seminar by Sihao Cheng, IAS, Princeton

Data from the Gaia satellite have been revolutionizing many fields of astronomy. I will present two discoveries about white dwarfs: one is an extreme cooling anomaly that poses a challenge in white dwarf physics, and the other is the existence of merger products among single white dwarfs. An interesting idea that includes buoyant icebergs formed and moved by plasma distillation explains all observational aspects of the challenge. I will also discuss its implications for type-Ia supernovae and binary evolution.

Host: Zoltan Haiman