Brandon Carter, (born 1942) is an Australian

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experime ...

, best known for his work on the properties of black holes and for being the first to name and employ the anthropic principle in its contemporary form. He is a researcher at the

Meudon Meudon () is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris. The city is known for many historic monuments and some extraordinary trees. One of t ...

campus of the Laboratoire Univers et Théories, part of the CNRS.

Biography

Carter studied at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

under Dennis Sciama. He found the exact solution of the

geodesic equation In geometry, a geodesic () is a curve representing in some sense the shortest path ( arc) between two points in a surface, or more generally in a Riemannian manifold. The term also has meaning in any differentiable manifold with a connection ...

s for the Kerr/Newman electrovacuum solution, and the maximal analytic extension of this solution. In the process, he discovered the extraordinary ''fourth constant of motion'' and the Killing–Yano tensor. Together with

Werner Israel Werner Israel, (October 4, 1931 – May 18, 2022) was a physicist, author, researcher, and professor at the University of Victoria. Biography Born in Berlin, Germany and raised in Cape Town, South Africa, he first received his B.Sc. in 1951 an ...

and Stephen Hawking, he proved partially the

no-hair theorem The no-hair theorem states that all stationary black hole solutions of the Einstein–Maxwell equations of gravitation and electromagnetism in general relativity can be completely characterized by only three independent ''externally'' observabl ...

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

, stating that all stationary black holes are completely characterized by

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

charge Charge or charged may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * '' Charge, Zero Emissions/Maximum Speed'', a 2011 documentary Music * ''Charge'' (David Ford album) * ''Charge'' (Machel Montano album) * ''Charge!!'', an album by The Aqu ...

, and

angular momentum In physics, angular momentum (rarely, moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important physical quantity because it is a conserved quantity—the total angular momentum of a closed syst ...

. In 1982 with astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, he invented the concept of tidal disruption event (TDE), namely the destruction of a star passing in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. They showed that this phenomenon could result in the violent destruction of the star in the form of a "stellar pancake", causing a reactivation of nuclear reactions in the core of the star in the stage of its maximum compression. More recently, Carter, Chachoua, and Chamel (2005) have formulated a relativistic theory of elastic deformations in

neutron star A neutron star is the collapsed core of a massive supergiant star, which had a total mass of between 10 and 25 solar masses, possibly more if the star was especially metal-rich. Except for black holes and some hypothetical objects (e.g. w ...

References

* * * * * Carter, B. & Luminet, J.- P. (1982) "Pancake Detonation of Stars by Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei"''. Nature'' 296, 211 (1982) *

External links

Site of the Laboratoire ''Univers et Théories'' (LUTH)
*
Brandon Carter’s page at the LUTH (in French)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Brandon 1942 births 20th-century Australian physicists 21st-century Australian physicists French National Centre for Scientific Research scientists Fellows of the Royal Society Living people