Lead physicist on Galaxy structure project to talk about discovery, media
Released: August 30, 2005
It was bound to happen. Headline writers just can’t help themselves. UW-Whitewater physic’s professor Robert Benjamin surveys a stellar bar slashing through the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy and despite the major astronomical news the puns emerged. “Milky Way has a bar, and it’s not chocolate.”
Other newspapers decided to take the research just a bit further and add quotes from other scientists to the Associated Press’ wire story that conclude that the galactic bar proves the Big Bang theory is correct.
It all just makes Benjamin smile and shake his head just a bit.
You can hear the straight story on how Benjamin, along with team of scientists from UW-Madison, used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to detect the star bar and how the story became an international hit at his discussion called, “Milky Way Bar Satisfies Scientists: A UW-Whitewater Galactic Discovery Makes International Headlines.” The talk will be held at 8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9 in Upham Hall Room 140 on the UW-Whitewater campus. The event is open to the public.
If you can’t make the Sept. 9 talk, Benjamin will speak on “A Bird’s Eye View of our Milky Way Galaxy: New Results from the Spitzer Space Telescope” at 7 p.m. Sept. 13 at the UW Space Place, 2300 S. Park St., Madison.
For more information on the discovery, see the UW-Whitewater Physics Department Web site at academics.uww.edu/physics and the GLIMPSE team Web site www.astro.wisc.edu/glimpse.
- Sara Kuhl,kuhls@uww.edu
