Brandon Carter

Biography

Carter studied at the University of Cambridge under Dennis Sciama. He found the exact solution of the geodesic equations 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 and Stephen Hawking, he partially proved the no-hair theorem in general relativity, stating that all stationary black holes are completely characterized by mass, charge, and angular momentum. 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 stars.