Astrophysics Colloquium

KIPAC hosts the Astrophysics Colloquium, currently held online via zoom.

Please contact colloquium@kipac.stanford.edu for more information.

Seeing to the Event Horizons of Supermassive Black Holes

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Speaker
Dan Wilkins (KIPAC) via zoom https://stanford.zoom.us/j/423773826

Zoom info: https://stanford.zoom.us/j/423773826

Supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies power some of the brightest objects we see in the Universe; active galactic nuclei (AGN). Much remains unknown, however, about exactly how energy is released from the material falling in through the accretion disc, and from the black hole itself, to form the powerful X-ray corona and to launch jets at almost the speed of light.

Fast Radio Bursts

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Speaker
Vicky Kaspi (McGill University, Montreal) via zoom

Zoom Recording  

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short (few millisecond) bursts of radio waves observed from cosmological distances.  Their origin is presently unknown, yet their rate is many hundreds per sky per day, indicating a not-uncommon phenomenon in the Universe.  In this talk, I will review the FRB field and present new results on FRBs from a new digital transit radio telescope, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME).

 

 

CHIME - the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment

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Speaker
Keith Vanderlinde (University of Toronto) via zoom

Zoom Recording

The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is an ambitious project to study Dark Energy by tracing out 4 billion years of cosmic history, using a purpose-built radio telescope at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley. Subsequent extensions simultaneously probe the high-cadence time-domain radio sky, monitoring radio pulsars and detecting hundreds of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).