Artist's concept of a powerful beam of gamma rays.
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!!
Also check out Bente Bye’s wonderful installment of A Green Space — A Green Earth, tying Earth science and the Haiti earthquake together into a compelling story. It’s often tempting when we study Earth systems in geology or atmospheric conditions on a planet or volcanic systems to overlook the human impact that changes in those systems can have. We live on an active planet — we formed here, we evolved in its ecological niches, and in some very real senses, we are changing the planet by our presence. We often forget that the planet can change US — as the Haiti earthquake so profoundly illustrates. This is something that geologists and other earth scientists know by heart.
Bente is an astrophysicist and earth science expert living in Norway. She specializes in observing planet Earth and describing how it changes and what those changes mean to us. Her episode is in the best tradition of earth science — reporting what happened, how it happened, and going beyond the physics of the situation to the actual human toll that living on an active planet takes. Check out her episode here.
There’s a lot more on this month’s Astrocast.TV, including what’s up in the sky for skygazers in February, and a look at Mars exploration. For the full program, visit the Astrocast.TV website.
