My long-term research goal is to enable real robots to manipulate any kind of object so that they can perform many different tasks in...
Mar8
Gamma-ray Bursts: Nature’s Most Remarkable Cosmic Explosions
Brad Cenko, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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First discovered serendipitously in 1967, the phenomena known as gamma-ray bursts - short-lived, extremely bright flashes of high-energy radiation - mystified astronomers for decades. Despite many breakthroughs, key open questions - such as the mechanism responsible for the prompt gamma-ray emission, as well as a detailed characterization of their progenitor systems - remain open. In this talk I’ll review several recent results, including 1) the discovery of very high-energy (TeV) gamma-rays from ground-based Cherenkov detectors; 2) the association of a peculiar short gamma-ray burst with the binary neutron star merger GW170817; and 3) prospects for utilizing these events as probes of the early universe and the epoch of reionization.
About Brad Cenko
Brad Cenko is a Research Astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research interests are varied but largely fall under the rubric of observational time-domain astronomy, including gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and tidal disruption events. He is also intent on developing instrumentation and software to enable novel observations of such time-variable phenomena. He serves as Principal Investigator of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, a multi-wavelength NASA Explorer mission launched in 2004.
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