Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21941201w&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #412.01
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Scientific paper
Astronomy, in contrast with other sciences, has traditionally been considered an observational science; it has not been possible to perform experiments on the objects we observe. This situation has changed in a way that is transformational. Although laboratory astrophysics has long been an important part of astronomical research, what has changed is the ability to produce large enough chunks of a star that we can make measurements and perform experiments. We are now able to make macroscopic quantities of star stuff in the lab: plasmas created under conditions that are the same as the plasmas in stars. In a cosmic sense, as physicist Greg Rochau likes to point out, the conditions on Earth are far from normal, they could even be considered extreme or bizarre compared to the more cosmically normal conditions in stars. We can now examine, on Earth, matter under more cosmically "normal” conditions.
I will describe how this came about, the technology behind it, and the results of our recent laboratory experiments done on Z at Sandia National Laboratories. We will discuss how this will change our understanding of white dwarf stars and, through this, what we know about the universe and its contents based on these stars.
Finally, we will briefly examine other fundamental astrophysics being done on Z and focus on the tremendous potential of the Z platform for astrophysics experiments in the future.
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