Podcaster: Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama ; Guest: Dr Marisa Geyer
Title: The Cosmic Savannah – Ep. 040: The Mystery of the Fast Radio Burst
Link : www.thecosmicsavannah.com ; @cosmicsavannah (twitter, facebook & instagram) ; https://thecosmicsavannah.com/episode-39-erupting-novae/
Description:
In this episode, The Cosmic Savannah team talk with Dr Marisa Geyer on what it’s like to be a commissioning scientist for the MeerKAT telescope and her research on pulsars and mysterious Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).
FRBs are sudden, bright flashes of radio light. Usually they only appear once and then are never seen again.
The mystery is that we don’t know what is causing these bursts of light! All we know is it’s something powerful, and probably something very far away.
Marisa talks us through the mystery and reveals some enticing clues about what might be causing FRBs. Hint: it involves something called a magnetar!
Bio: Dr Jacinta Delhaize and Dr Daniel Cunnama are astronomers based in Cape Town, South Africa. Jacinta is a Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town. She spends her time using huge radio telescopes to study gas and black holes in distant galaxies. Daniel is the Science Engagement Astronomer at the South African Astronomical Observatory. He likes to use large supercomputers to create simulations of galaxies. Both Jacinta and Daniel love to promote the incredible astronomy happening across the African continent.
Dr Marisa Geyer is a pulsar astronomer and Commissioning Scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) in Cape Town, South Africa.
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Transcript:
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