On September 13, 2012 the Astronomy department had an interesting visitor Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz (pictured below).  Ramirez-Ruiz is a member of one of the best astronomy research schools in the United States, the University of California.

Ramirez-Ruiz gave a very interesting and exciting hour long lecture on the tidal disruption of stars by massive black holes.  He presented his data in a convincing matter which included; pictures, videos, equations, and graphs.

Ramirez-Ruiz said his motivation was that he wanted to unveil dead quasars.  To achieve his goal he said he had to first digest the matter surrounding black holes. This matter of course included stars.  He explained that the orbits of stars can be greatly impacted by massive black holes, he also stated that there were close and long distance encounters.  Ramirez-Ruiz said that stars that are tidally altered by massive black holes engage in a random walk and they have non linear angular momentum. One of the most interesting things he did was compare the equations of both the Schwarzchild radius and the Tidal radius.  He explained that Tidal radius gets weaker with mass gain and that the Schwarzchild radius was linear with mass gain.  The biggest topic he discussed that caught my attention was 'imposter' stars.  He explained how lower mass stars can appear to have greater masses, hints the title 'imposter' stars.

Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz presented an incredible lecture and I felt like it was a true pleasure to meet him and ask him questions about his research. He has an awesome personality and he is quite funny!