With Dale Frail

The latest episode of The Astronomer’s Universe is up live on Astrocast.TV and it’s all about those powerful flashes of light in the cosmos called gamma-ray bursts. These outbursts mystified astronomers for more than four decades until they figured out some plausible mechanisms for what causes them.

For this segment, I interviewed Dr. Dale Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array radio telescope installation in New Mexico. He and a group of colleagues have been observing these monster explosions, particularly in radio wavelengths and have recently made great strides in deducing the engines that power gamma-ray bursts.  Essentially there are two mechanisms:  massive supernova explosions that collapse matter into a black hole and/or the merger of two really massive objects such as neutron stars.  Each gives off bursts of gamma rays.   Watch the episode for Dr. Frail’s take on GRBs.  Also, head over to the main Astrocast.TV web site and see our other great offerings, including Harold Gellar’s tour of the night sky (click on the “Our Night Sky” link) and Bente Lilje Bye’s fascinating study of volcanoes at the link for “A Green Space, A Green Earth”. Enjoy!!