Date: April 19
Hour: 2 p.m.
Venue: Abreu Faro Amphitheatre, Interdisciplinary Building, Alameda Campus
«Prof. Roger Blandford (Stanford University) will deliver an IST Distinguished Lecture titled “Extreme Electrodynamics of Compact Sources”, on April 19, 2024, co-organised by the Group of Lasers and Plasmas of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion, the Center for Astrophysics and Gravitation and the Department of Physics at Instituto Superior Técnico.
Abstract:
The development of classical and quantum electrodynamics were highlights of nineteenth and twentieth century physics, respectively. Observations of neutron stars and black holes are taking these disciplines into new and extreme territory. We are seeing magnetic field of strength greater than 100 GT, potential differences more than 1 ZV, effective temperatures above 10^40 K, neutrinos and gamma rays with energy more than 1 PeV and 300 EeV cosmic rays. Recent discoveries will be described alongside the challenges they pose to computational, experimental, observational and theoretical plasma physics.
Speaker bio:
Roger Blandford took his BA, MA and PhD degrees at Cambridge University. Following postdoctoral research at Cambridge, Princeton and Berkeley he took up a faculty position at Caltech in 1976 where he was appointed as the Richard Chace Tolman Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics in 1989. In 2003 he moved to Stanford University to become the first Director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology and the Luke Blossom Chair in the School of Humanities and Science. He is currently the Director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Electrodynamics of Compact Sources. He co-authored with Kip Thorne the textbook Modern Classical Physics. His research interests include neutron star and black hole astrophysics, cosmic rays, cosmology, gravitational lensing, and astrobiology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2008-2010, he chaired a two year National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He was awarded the 1998 Dannie Heineman Prize of the American Astronomical Society, the 2013 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the 2016 Crafoord Prize for Astronomy and the 2020 Shaw Prize for Astronomy.
