Virtual STEM Talk
Date:
Friday 29th September 2023
Time:
Speaker:
Xander Byrne
Sign-up Form:
For:
About
The night sky evokes a primal curiosity. Since the dawn of humankind, we have looked to the celestial lights with intrigue, humility, and awe. Today, modern technology has fantastically advanced our understanding of the heavens, and enabled today's astronomers to unveil a dramatic Universe home to objects and phenomena beyond the wildest dreams of our ancestors.
In this talk, we will look at the vast range of topics studied by professional astronomers, with a particular focus on two areas I have researched:
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High-redshift quasars: violent black holes powering the brightest sources in the Universe in the turbulent cores of distant galaxies, blazing at us from the Universe's infancy
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Exoplanet surfaces: how we can use the atmospheres of alien planets to characterise their surfaces
Virtual Event Details - Please Read Carefully
Students are required to provide their email address in the sign-up form. A confirmation email will be sent, which students must reply to in order to receive the joining link.
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The Google Meet Link will be sent two hours before the event. Students must keep video cameras and microphones off during the talk. The chat will only be turned on at the end of the talk for a Q&A session. Students who post any inappropriate, irrelevant or disrespectful questions and comments in the chat will be immediately removed from the talk, and will be banned from joining future BSSN events.
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The event will be supervised by a teacher, and a recording will be uploaded onto our YouTube channel.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Alexander Byrne is an astronomer and science communicator, whose research focuses on exoplanets. He has made several appearances on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire's The Naked Scientists live radio show and podcast, and has given talks to the Cambridge University Physics Society and served on the Teaching Committee of the Institute of Astronomy.
