On the Nature of Neutron Stars in Accreting Systems
Channel: The Royal Society of Victoria
Date: 2020-08-20

Adelle Goodwin's research has important implications for our understanding of strong gravitational fields, the dense equation of state, and nuclear reactions in extreme environments. She obtained the first detailed observations of the lead up and onset of outburst in an accreting neutron star, which has required a rethink of our theoretical understanding of accretion disks. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo program she developed provides a new method of constraining neutron star mass and radius, which are important in fundamentally understanding dense matter, and will be used in the future to infer many accreting neutron star parameters. She recently presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in June 2020 and her research has since attracted a large amount of media attention, published in newspapers, online websites, on radio, and in podcasts throughout the world.

Adelle Goodwin is a final year PhD candidate with the School of Physics & Astronomy at Monash University. This presentation "On the Nature of Neutron Stars in Accreting Systems" comprises her entry to the Physical Sciences category of the Young Scientist Research Prizes in 2020, an annual competition conducted by the Royal Society of Victoria during National Science Week in Australia. Adelle is the First Prize winner in this category.

Due to Stage Four lockdown conditions in Victoria in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this presentation was necessarily filmed on 13 August, 2020 and presented to judges at the Royal Society of Victoria on the evening 19 August, 2020, both via video conference.