The 2024 Bunyan Lecture: Victoria Kaspi - “The Fast Radio Sky”

Mon February 12th 2024 In 2007, astronomers discovered a new mysterious cosmic phenomenon: Fast Radio Bursts. These events consist of short, intense blasts of radio waves arriving from far outside our Milky Way galaxy. Their origin is unknown, however Fast Radio Bursts appear ubiquitous in our Universe, with roughly 1000 arriving every day over the full sky. I will describe the Fast Radio Burst mystery and what is presently known about it, and present a revolutionary new radio telescope recently built in Canada that is enabling astronomers to make major progress in our understanding of the FRB puzzle. Victoria Kaspi has made important contributions to the understanding of the universe, with major discoveries throughout her career in the study of rapidly spinning compact neutron stars called pulsars. She holds a Canada Research Chair and the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology at McGill University, where she is also the Director of the Trottier Space Institute.