Introducing: Ed Cackett

Hi, I'm Ed Cackett, a Chandra Fellow at the University of Michigan, and one of your intrepid bloggers for the rapidly approaching Crust09 workshop. You'll hear about my research interest in quiescent low-mass X-ray binaries during the workshop. Outside of astronomy, I have a keen interest in music (mostly jazz & blues), eating, and trying to avoid changing diapers. Come say 'hello' to me in Santa Fe (I'm the guy in the picture not in red!).

Questions from Chuck Horowitz

Chuck Horowitz posed a set of questions recently to the organizers, which he thought would be useful to consider in the context of the "Defining the Neutron Star Crust" workshop:


I] Neutron star geology
A) Are neutron stars planets?
B) Are NS geologically active?
C) Do NS have plate tectonics?
a. Faults?
b. Volcanoes?
c. Mountains?
d. Other surface features?
D) What minerals/ kinds of rock are present?

II] Star quakes
A) Are giant flares triggered by star quakes? If so, must the crust be very strong to explain the large energy of the 2004 giant flare in SGR 1806-20?
B) Are flares and microflares also related to star quakes? If so, how are quakes, that correspond to flares of different energy, related?
C) How does the crust break?
a. Catastrophically or more gradually?
b. In which direction and over what volume?
c. Does the crust melt during a quake?
d. At what depth?
e. Which oscillation modes are excited and with what amplitudes?
f. What is the role of magnetic fields?
D) How do quakes change the properties of future quakes?

III] Composition of accreting star crust
A) What is the value of the impurity parameter Q=-^2 (dispersion in ion charge Z) and how does it vary with density?
B) Do we have an “impurity problem” where theoretical Q is too large to agree with limits from crust cooling observations?
a. Are limits robust?
b. If so, how might the impurity problem be solved? [During nucleosyn?, phase separation?, nuclear reactions?]
C) Does the composition relax to cold catalyzed matter soon after neutron drip? If so how much heat is released?

IV] Pasta
A) How do we “smell the pasta”? What observables demonstrate the presence of pasta? [I think this is hard]
B) How does the microphysics change in going from crust to pasta to core? Does it change abruptly, or is there a more smooth transition?
C) How does pasta change the shear modulus, shear mode frequencies, and breaking strain?
D) Is there large damping of collective modes at the crust / core interface, or is the damping muted by the pasta?

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog for "Defining the Neutron Star Crust: X-ray Bursts, Superbursts and Giant Flares", a conference sponsored by Los Alamos National Observatory, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, and the CompStar collaboration, to be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico May 18-21 2009.

In the run-up to the meeting, we'll be introducing your intrepid bloggers, who will be posting brief summaries of the talks as they happen, giving you an insider's ear to the discussions around the conference room, and a view outside to what is going on around Santa Fe. We'll also be posting any last-minute or additional information for those who are traveling to the conference. Postings will have comments sections, and we hope to hear from those who are physically present with us in Santa Fe, and those who are following the proceedings from a distance.

We're looking forward to see you.