Stony Brook University
7:30 pm; ESS Building, Room 001
Friday, April 04, 2019
Fast Radio Bursts
Dr. Alice Harpole
In 2007, astronomers detected a mysterious burst of radio waves, quite unlike anything they had seen before. Not only was it much brighter and shorter than typical observations, but the burst seemed to come from outside of our galaxy, far further away than known radio sources. At the time, astronomers knew of no source that could produce such a signal. Over a decade and more than 60 similar detections later, we are still none the wiser. In this talk, I will present the current state of observations, look at what makes these bursts so puzzling and discuss theories for what in the universe could be producing them.
Dr. Alice Harpole is a postdoc in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Stony Brook. Her research focuses on computational astrophysics, using simulations to model stellar hydrodynamics. She received her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Southampton, UK before joining Stony Brook in August 2018.
