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Free public lecture at University of Leicester on 27 May. The brightest cosmic explosion ever witnessed was observed by scientists at the University of Leicester in March 2008.
The extraordinary event was bright enough to have been seen with the naked eye, even though it was over 7 billion light years away, and the light from the explosion set off long before the Earth was formed. Now, the mysteries of gamma ray bursts are to be explained to the public at a lecture to be held on 27 May. Professor Nial Tanvir will talk about 'Blasts from the past: Using cosmic explosions to explore the distant universe' at the free public event which starts at 5.30pm in Ken Edwards Lecture Theatre 1. Professor Tanvir said: “Gamma-ray bursts are by far the most dramatic explosions known to science. “They appear to be produced at the moment of creation of a black hole, and are so incredibly luminous that they can easily be seen at the far side of the observable universe. “For this reason they are powerful searchlights which can be used to illuminate those distant realms, and allow us to peer back in time to an era when the first stars were forming” Professor Tanvir said that the difficulty of trying to study gamma-ray bursts is that they are rare and very fleeting. The bright period of the explosion only lasts typically a few seconds, and so astronomers must be prepared to respond very rapidly when they occur. Professor Tanvir added: "The University of Leicester is one of the world's leading centres for the study of gamma-ray bursts. Researchers in the Department of Physics and Astronomy are involved both in their discovery, using the Swift satellite, and also in investigations with other telescopes, such as the Hubble, from which we learn much more about their nature.” After setting the scene with a description of our modern understanding of Big Bang cosmology, Professor Tanvir will report on the latest results in this fast moving field, and on attempts to find the most distant objects ever seen. |
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