Podcaster: Anna Ho
Title: An Introduction to Pulsars: Cosmic Lighthouses
Links: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/author/annayq
Description: Inside the core of a massive star, fuel is converted into energy. When this fuel runs out, the consequences are violent: the star’s outer layers explode in a supernova. In themeantime, the core collapses, shrinking to the size of a small city and spinning faster and faster. The core emits a beam of light out of each magnetic pole, and like a lighthouse these beams flash past Earth as the core rotates. This blinking core is called a pulsar, and here on Earth astronomers are watching them spin and using them to learn more about the universe.
Bio: Anna Ho is from…well, it’s complicated. She was born in Singapore and moved to England when she was nine, but has an American accent because she went to an American school. She majored in physics at MIT and through her research developed a sentimental attachment to pulsars and in particular the pulsars in a globular cluster called Terzan 5. She loves talking about science with students in a classroom, with public audiences at observatories, or with strangers in elevators. In the fall, she will move to Germany for a year at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, before beginning her astronomy PhD at Caltech.
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365 Days of Astronomy
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