Register on Zoom
Join us for our November lecture in our 2024-25 AAA Lecture Series with speaker Dr. Rob Coyne, Associate Teaching Professor
of Physics at the University of Rhode Island. The topic will be: Curious cosmic catastrophes: Unraveling the multi-messenger mysteries of gamma-ray bursts.
Throughout history, humans have mainly relied on a single cosmic “messenger” to observe the universe: light. While light has helped us answer many questions, the origin of gamma-ray bursts – intense flashes of high-energy light from the death of certain exotic stars – remained a mystery. But with the Nobel-prize winning discovery of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself, we now have another cosmic messenger to study the universe. By combining multi-messenger observations made with light and gravitational waves, we hope to solve the lingering mysteries of these curious cosmic catastrophes.
The Amateur Astronomers Association Lecture Series is held on the second Tuesday of each month, from October–May, beginning at 7:00 PM Eastern time.
Lectures are free and open to the public, but registration via Zoom is required.
Rob Coyne is an Associate Teaching Professor of Physics at the University of Rhode Island. He earned his doctoral degree at the George Washington University in 2015 for work on searches for gravitational waves associated with gamma-ray bursts, before continuing on to post-doctoral work at Texas Tech University. He has been a member of the gravitational wave community since 2013, and has contributed to numerous publications in the field of multi-messenger astronomy in the years since. He is also an avid educator and science communicator, with a passion for making astrophysics accessible for all who wish to study it.