The Cosmic Savannah - Ep. 81: One Last Burst: Gamma Rays & Afterglows

Hosted by Dr. Jacinta Delhaize, Dr. Tshiamiso Makwela, Dr. Daniel Cunnama & François Campher

In this episode, Jacinta chats with Dr. Simon de Wet about the discoveries he made during his Master's and PhD theses regarding mysterious gamma ray bursts (GRBs). Meanwhile, the team takes a trip back to the Pendulum Room for a final farewell to the old studio.

 

Gamma Ray Bursts are some of the brightest bursts of high energy light in space, usually originating from the collapse of a massive star or two neutron stars colliding. Both of these processes create a black hole, which ejects very bright light into space. GRBs happen frequently, but far away from us!

 

Simon has begun his post-doc in Copenhagen where he will continue working on transient astronomy. Transient astronomy involves studying objects that vary in their nature. Simon talks us through the accidental discovery of GRBs, how we discovered that GRBs are from very distant galaxies. He also mentions that GRBs originate from collapsing stars as well as the formation of a black hole.

 

Simon's PhD work focused on trying to capture the optical afterglow of GRBs using the MeerLICHT telescope in Sutherland. He found that the light curves of the optical afterglows observed did not behave as expected. Simon used radio data from MeerKAT, ALMA in Chile, ATCA in Australia and GMRT in India where radio afterglows were observed.

 

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