ITHACA, N.Y. – In Nov. 28 obituaries for Cornell University astrophysicist Edwin E. Salpeter, The Associated Press erroneously labeled his 1951 "Salpeter process" describing how helium changes to carbon as the "Salpeter-Bethe equation." That equation, by Salpeter and Cornell colleague Hans Bethe and also developed in 1951, instead describes bound states of a pair of interacting particles in quantum field theory.
Also, relying on information provided by Cornell, the stories erroneously described how data from the Hubble Space Telescope confirmed Salpeter's proposal on detecting high-temperature gases falling toward a black hole. The telescope relied on optical observations, rather than X-rays, to detect the gases.
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