May 21, 2021 7-9PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: The Surprising World of Pulsars
Lecturer: Amruta Jaodand
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution: Caltech
Abstract:
In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered a little "scruff" in her radio telescope data repeating at a regular interval. The short duration of pulses from this source eluded obvious explanation, hence they were playfully dubbed "little green men". Theoretical advances and the discovery of additional pulsing sources led to their identification as the dense, collapsed cores of stars left behind after a giant star explodes as a supernova, and they were renamed "pulsars". In the last fifty years pulsar astronomy has grown dramatically. New telescopes coupled with computational advances have revealed spectacular insights about how our universe works, additionally garnering two Nobel Prizes. Join me as I cover the major discoveries in pulsar astronomy, and what pulsars can teach us about our place in the universe.