Timothy C Beers , Kitt Peak National Observatory,
Highly r-Process Enhanced Stars: New Perspectives on Old Stars
Argonne Physics Division Colloquium - 17 Feb 2012
11:00 AM, Building 203 auditorium

I summarize the current crop of r-process-enhanced stars that have been discovered to date, and comment on new efforts to identify additional representatives of this class, based on ongoing and future large-scale surveys. I also describe the progress of an ongoing program to put limits on the binary properties of such stars, which is an important missing piece of information concerning the nature of the r-process itself. Futhermore, I comment on the implications of a recently discovered extremely metal-poor main sequence star with large r-process enhancement, and how many more such stars as this will inform our knowledge of production ratios of the actinides, a necessary step for improved nucleo-cosmochronogical age determinations in the future.

Argonne Physics Division Colloquium Schedule