KALAMAZOO (WKZO AM/FM) — Western Michigan University says one of their recent grads, Ian Brown finds himself on the cutting edge of astrophysics, on one of the teams monitoring the kilonova, a breakthrough event in the scientific world that is answering a lot of questions that until now were just theories.
Scientists could tell you how oxygen and water and other simple elements formed on earth, but there have only been theories about how complex atoms like gold and platinum and radium formed.
Over the past two months they have gotten to see for themselves as they have witnessed the effects of two neutron stars colliding in remote space.
First monitoring equipment recorded a powerful gravitational wave…then the radiation hit earth.
Responding to the alarms that something weird was taking place in space, the world’s telescopes and the Hubble, working in unison turned to that part of the galaxy and in a few hours had found the Kilonova, and they have been taking turns recording it ever since as the earth continues to spin through space.
Brown is on the team at an Australian radio telescope.
Brown, from Baroda in Berrien County, majored in physics at WMU and has been under a gag order about the discovery of the kilonova until the international team working on the observations went public this week.
Brown was named a Presidential Scholar in his discipline–the highest honor a WMU undergraduate can earn, and emailed his mentors in the WMU Department of Physics to let them know the role he has played in the achievement and to thank them for their support.
“It is partly due to your recommendations that I was in the right place at the right time to be included in this amazing astronomical event.” Brown wrote to them. “…I have to say, given the current events, grad school is turning out a lot more fun that I thought it would be.”
