December 12, 2021 7-9PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: A Brief History of the Fast Radio Burst Enigma
Lecturer: Liam Connor
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution: Caltech
Abstract:
Fast Radio Bursts, or “FRBs”, are short blasts of radio waves that come from galaxies billions of light years away. They are extraordinarily bright, brief, and common, but due to technological limitations we only began discovering them recently. Despite significant progress in the field, the exact origin of FRBs remains unclear. In my lecture, I’ll walk through an exciting decade of FRB discovery and speculate on what is (and what almost certainly isn’t...) causing these mysterious, powerful flashes from across the universe.