This man commuted 150 miles round-trip every week between Yerkes Observatory and the University of Chicago to teach a single class with just 2 students: T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this scientist who developed a tensor version of the virial theorem. Along with Hubble, Spitzer, and Compton, this scientist names one of NASA's four “Great Observatories.”
ANSWER: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
[10h] Chandrasekhar derived the first formula for this phenomenon, in which a large object moving quickly through a region with many other masses experiences braking forces and loses orbital energy.
ANSWER: dynamical friction [or Chandrasekhar friction; prompt on friction]
[10e] Dynamical friction is a driver of the early phase of these events. The Milky Way and Andromeda are predicted to undergo one of these events in about 4.5 billion years.
ANSWER: galaxy mergers [or galaxy collisions]
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