Written by Carmelo Amalfi Thursday, 10 June 2010 09:14
YOUNG people can have just as much fun pursuing physics and mathematical mysteries as winning the latest computer game challenge, according to Professor Roy Kerr.
“Life is a game,” said 76-year-old New Zealand mathematician Prof Kerr.
“You just have to pick the arena you want to play it on. And science is a real funny arena.”
Prof Kerr was working at the University of Texas when he cracked Einstein’s gravitational field equations in 1963 to describe the behaviour of space outside a rotating star or black hole.
His ‘Kerr solution’ is described as the most important exact solution to any equation in physics and has since been instrumental in deepening scientists’ understanding of astrophysics and gravitation.
Prof Kerr was in Perth to visit gravity wave researchers at the University of WA as well as take some time out to rub shoulders with hundreds of secondary science teachers and students as part of UWA’s SPICE program.
SPICE is a secondary teachers’ enrichment program, a UWA-Department of Education initiative based in UWA’s Centre for Learning Technology.
Prof Kerr, a former St Andrew's College high school student in Christchurch, said science could bring a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction.
He praised the Gravity Discovery Centre at Gingin as a centre of science learning, and curiosity, saying “WA is lucky to have it.”
University of WA physicist David Blair described Professor Kerr as a hero of science who has made, and continues to make, a major contribution to physics and mathematics.
“In physics there are only two exact solutions where we can say the universe is exactly described by mathematics,” Professor Blair said.
“One is black holes, the solution to which Kerr cracked in 1963. And the other is the solution to the hydrogen atom.”
He said the Kerr solution will contribute to the understanding of the signatures of gravitational waves scientists such as Professor Blair hope to detect within the next decade using the Australian International Gravitational Observatory at Gingin.
The L-shaped laser detector 70 km north of Perth is one of four other gravitational wave detectors located in Italy, Japan and two in the United States.
Recently, scientists have shown from observations of matter falling into a supermassive black hole billions of times the mass of our own sun in the centre of our galaxy that it must be rotating at close to half of the maximum rate allowed by the Kerr solution.
