FLUID FLOWS TO BLACK HOLES A Tribute to S. Chandrasekhar on His Birth Centenary 8327.9789814374767-tp.indd 1 12/2/11 5:25 PM TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk FLUID FLOWS TO BLACK HOLES A Tribute to S. Chandrasekhar on His Birth Centenary Editors D. J. Saikia Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, India Virginia Trimble University of California, Irvine, USA & Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, USA World Scientific NEW JERSEY • LONDON • SINGAPORE • BEIJING • SHANGHAI • HONG KONG • TAIPEI • CHENNAI 8327.9789814374767-tp.indd 2 12/2/11 5:25 PM Published by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. FLUID FLOWS TO BLACK HOLES A Tribute to S Chandrasekhar on His Birth Centenary Copyright © 2011 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher. ISBN-13 978-981-4374-76-7 ISBN-10 981-4374-76-8 Printed in Singapore. Lakshmi - Fluid Flows to Black Holes.pmd 1 11/21/2011, 10:50 AM Preface Professor SubrahmanyanChandrasekhar was a legend well within his own lifetime, and continuestobesoafterhisdeathonAugust21,1995. Thusitisnotsurprisingthatmany institutions,inIndia,intheUnitedStates,andelsewherechosetocelebrateinvariousways the100thanniversaryofhisbirthonOctober19,1910.Oneofthesecelebrationstookplace at the University of Chicago, where he joined the faculty in January 1937. He remained therefortherestofhislife. TheChandrasekharCentennialSymposiumattheUniversityofChicagowasheldfrom October15–17,withtheInternationalPlanningCommitteebeingco-chairedbyProfessors Robert Wald and Kameshwar C. Wali. It included both scientific and personal reminis- cences by students and colleagues who had known him quite well, and reports by other scholarsontopicsthathehadpioneered. AspecialissueoftheBulletinoftheAstronomi- calSocietyofIndia(BASI),publishedinMarch2011,comprisedwrittenversionsofsome ofthosetalksandadditionalarticlescoveringtopicsnotrepresentedatthe conferenceby other distinguishedastrophysicists. This bookcontainsa dozen articles publishedin this special issue of BASI, as well as a biographicalportrait, his role in 20th centuryscience and severalpersonalreminiscences based on articles published in Physics Today, and an accountof Chandrasekharand the legacyof Ramanujan, and Chandrasekhar’simpacton Indianastronomy. One of us (VT) was the PhD student of Chandrasekhar’s student Professor Guido Munch,andwasluckytoknowhimatalevelthatentitledonetoaddresshimasChandra. It has been a privilegefor both of us to edit the issue of BASI and this bookas a tribute to Professor Chandrasekhar on his birth centenary. We would like to take this opportu- nitytothankMsSandraRajivafromtheIndianInstituteofAstrophysicsandMsLakshmi Narayananfrom World Scientific Publishing for their help in editing the special issue of BASIandthisbookrespectivelytocelebrateProfessorChandrasekhar’sbirthcentenary. D.J.SaikiaandVirginiaTrimble Editors v TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk Chandrasekhar Centennial Symposium (October 15–17, 2010) October 19, 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. The symposium was an occasion for those who knew Chandra to commemorate his memory and work, and for those who did not know him to experiencefirsthandsomeoftheimpacthehadon20thcenturyscience. TheSym- posium began with a reception on the 15th evening followed by two full days of talksonOctober16and17. Coincidentally, October 15, 2010 was the 100th birthday of Lalitha Chandra- sekhar. The opening reception was devoted to the celebration of her birthday. Knowing her fondness for Indian dance and vocal music, a local dance troupe (Natraj Dance Company) and musicians were invited to perform. Although she could not be present in person, her being in good spirits and health was the oc- casion of joy for many who knew her well. A scroll expressing best wishes for her birthday and the commemoration of Chandra’s centennial from Martin Rees, President,theCouncilandFellowsoftheRoyalSocietyofLondonwaspresented and read for the occasion by Robert M. Wald. It was later presented in person to Lalitha. International Planning Committee AbhayAshtekar,NareshDadhich,ValeriaFerrari,JohnFriedman,GiuseppeMus- sardo,JayantNarlikar,RogerPenrose,SaulTeukolsky,RobertWald(co-chair)and KameshwarC.Wali(co-chair). FundingfortheSymposiumwasprovidedbytheNationalScienceFoundation andbytheDepartmentofAstronomyandAstrophysics,theEnricoFermiInstitute, theKavliInstituteforCosmologicalPhysics,andtheDepartmentofPhysicsofthe UniversityofChicago. vii viii FluidFlowstoBlackHoles Speakers atthe Symposium FreemanDyson: Chandra’sRolein20thCenturyScience Clifford Will: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Post-Newtonian Approxi- mation. Roger Penrose: Mathematical Properties of Black Holes and Colliding Plane Waves JayantV. Narlikar: Chandra’sImpactonIndianAstronomy JohnFriedaman: InstabilitiesofRelativisticStars KipS. Thorne: BlackHoles ValeriaFerrari: GravitationalWavesfromPerturbedStars MartinRees: Chandra’sScientificLegacy JamesM. Stone: MagnetohydrodynamicsinAstrophysicalContexts Priyamvada Natarajan: The Formation and Growth of Super-Massive Black Holes GanesanSrinivasan: ChandraandtheLegacyofRamanujan JeremiahP. Ostriker: GalaxyStructureandFormation RashidA. Sunyaev: ScatteringofRadiationintheUniverse: FromtheCMBand LastScatteringSurfacetoClustersofGalaxiesandQuasars GordonP. Garmire: TheChandraX-rayTelescope Contents Preface v ChandrasekharCentennialSymposium(October15–17,2010) vii Chandra:Abiographicalportrait 1 KameshwarC.Wali Chandrasekhar’srolein20th-centuryscience 13 FreemanDyson ChandrasekharandthelegacyofRamanujan 23 G.Srinivasan Chandra’sinfluenceonIndianastronomy 39 JayantV.Narlikar Chandrasekharandthehistoryofastronomy 49 VirginiaTrimble Compactstarsandtheevolutionofbinarysystems 55 E.P.J.vandenHeuvel Stabilityofrelativisticstars 75 JohnL.FriedmanandNikolaosStergioulas Keyproblemsinblackholephysicstoday 101 PankajS.Joshi Problemsofcollisionalstellardynamics 121 D.C.Heggie Chandrasekharandmodernstellardynamics 137 N.W.Evans MonteCarloradiativetransfer 151 BarbaraA.Whitney Astrophysicalmagnetohydrodynamics 177 JamesM.Stone ix