Astronomy on Tap Corvallis: Mass Extinction by Exploding Stars

Join us on Tuesday April 21st at 7pm for a talk from Dr. Lauren Rhodes! Her talk is titled:

Mass Extinction by Exploding Stars

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are stellar explosions that were discovered by satellites during the cold war. In the years since they our understanding has come on in leaps and bounds, we have found them to be some of the most energetic transients known. In this talk, I will present an overview of our understanding of GRBs and how recent observations have demonstrated how cosmological events can have a direct impact on planet Earth. Given these discoveries, I will discuss how, in the extreme case, a GRB could create a mass extinction using the Ordovician extinction event, which occurred around 440 million years ago, as an example.

About Dr. Rhodes

Dr. Lauren Rhodes grew up near London in the UK and was inspired to do physics & astronomy at University thanks for to her high school physics teacher Ms Savva. She completed my MPhys at the University of Sheffield before moving to the University of Oxford for her PhD and first post doc. For the last 18 months she’s been a research fellow at the Trottier Space Institute at McGill. Dr. Rhode’s research focuses on using radio telescopes to study relativistic outflows from all types of black holes. She loves how her research has allowed her to work with so many amazing, intelligent people all over the world.