Room 332, Phillips Hall. This talk will explore the role of materials in the development of modern Western civilization by putting technology into a historical context, tracing the advances made possible by innovations with stone, ceramics, glass and metals. Beautiful works of art will illustrate the application of early technologies. I will explore some of today's urgent questions and the means by which we hope to answer them, then look over the horizon to the questions we are just learning to formulate. I will conclude by showing how recent insights inform our understanding of the everyday world.
Supernova remnants exhibit that mass and energy as it interacts with the surrounding material.
Until the blast wave becomes largely radiative, the primary avenue for extracting information is X-ray spectroscopy, which can reveal total remnant energetics, and elemental abundances and spatial distribution of both ejected and ambient material. Applications to remnants SN 1006 and RCW 86 show that reliable inferences of thermal properties require including the possibility of nonthermal processes as well. At the end of a star's life cycle the outer layers of stellar material are ejected as a planetary nebula. The early phases of planetary nebula development are thought to play a key role in the overall formation of these objects. However, these early phases of evolution have been difficult to study due to the small angular sizes of these objects.