Science Briefing: Cosmic Chills: Vampire Stars, Black Widow Pulsars, and Dark Energy
Location
Virtual
Contact Information
About Event
In this Halloween edition of NASA’s Universe of Learning Science Briefings, we will hear about some of the most terrifying objects in space just in time for you to use to create your own fall programming.
Julia Bodensteiner will explain what vampire stars are and why most massive stars live their lives captured in a cosmic dance.
Roger W. Romani will tell us how the Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope unveiled a host of “Black Widow” pulsars destroying their companions; these pulsars turn out to be the densest stars known.
Kevin Spencer McCarthy will discuss the mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy which is accelerating the expansion of spacetime and presently has no substantial explanation. It was found when astronomers attempted to map the distribution of galaxies in our universe.
About the Series
The NASA’s Universe of Learning Science Briefings are professional learning telecons for the informal science education community, done in partnership with the NASA’s Museum & Informal Education Alliance, now found on NASA CONNECTS. These monthly thematic briefings highlight current NASA astrophysics explorations and discoveries from across the suite of NASA astrophysics missions. NASA scientists and engineers provide contemporary science results, and are able to respond to listener questions during the telecon. NASA-developed education and outreach resources, matched to the monthly theme, are included in every briefing.
In order to participate in the telecon and ask questions of the scientists, please join NASA’s Museum & Informal Education Alliance.
Facilitator & Presenters
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Kelly Lepo is an Education and Outreach Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she primarily works to support outreach efforts for the James Webb Space Telescope. She received a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Toronto. During her time in Canada, she made numerous local and national media appearances to talk about everything from the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse to the Super Blue Blood Moon. She previously served as the Coordinator of the McGill Space Institute, designed undergraduate teaching labs, taught physics at Gonzaga University, and helped build the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. -
Dr. Julia Bodensteiner is a postdoctoral fellow at the European Southern Observatory in Germany. She obtained her master of science in physics and astronomy from the Technical University of Munich. She conducted her Ph.D. at the KU Leuven in Belgium, where she investigated massive stars in our neighboring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Her research focuses on massive stars, in particular massive binary systems, and their study using observations from modern telescopes. -
Dr. Roger W. Romani has been a professor of physics at Stanford since 1991. His research group focuses on high-energy astrophysical sources, especially black holes and neutron stars. They use a combination of observations spanning the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio to gamma-rays, and theoretical modeling to understand the remarkable behavior of these exotic sources. Since the pulsar and black hole environments display the most extreme conditions in the observable universe, these studies can also improve our understanding of fundamental physics. Away from the office, Roger swims with the local Masters team and plays French horn in several community orchestras. -
Dr. Kevin Spencer McCarthy is a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at JPL. He received his bachelor of science in marketing from Florida State University in 2008 and bachelor of science in physics from the University of North Florida in 2015. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Utah in 2021. There, he studied the effects of dark matter halo assembly history on galaxy clustering, reducing the uncertainties in models used to find cosmological parameters. Since August 2021, he has been a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow centered at JPL working with the ESA Euclid mission to understand observational uncertainties that could hinder spectroscopic redshift measurements of distant galaxies, creating a distorted view of the universe. This work will help Euclid hone in on the nature of dark energy.
Kelly Lepo is an Education and Outreach Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she primarily works to support outreach efforts for the James Webb Space Telescope. She received a Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Toronto. During her time in Canada, she made numerous local and national media appearances to talk about everything from the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse to the Super Blue Blood Moon. She previously served as the Coordinator of the McGill Space Institute, designed undergraduate teaching labs, taught physics at Gonzaga University, and helped build the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.Event Resources
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Slide Presentation PPT
11 MB -
Resources PDF
291 KB -
Transcript
69 KB