The Daily Bulletin Archive

Michael Stamatikos, a visiting assistant professor of physics at the Ohio State University at Newark, will present "Interdisciplinary Astrophysics with Gamma-Ray Bursts" from 7:00 to 7:50 p.m. Thursday, May 9, in Science Building 272. This seminar is partially sponsored by funds from Robert and Dorothy Sweet.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are cosmological beacons of transient high-energy radiation that have challenged astrophysicists for more than four decades. Since their serendipitous discovery amidst the Cold War in the late 1960s, an international ensemble of orbiting satellite missions, such as "Swift" and "Fermi," in concert with novel ground-based observatories such as "IceCube," have identified these phenomena as the "death cries" of merging (binary) stellar companions and imploding massive stars—both of which ultimately result in one of nature's most enigmatic creations: a black hole.

Stamatikos will describe his ongoing NASA-related research initiatives, which are anchored on an interdisciplinary exploration of GRB astrophysics, via correlated high-energy astroparticle observations that leverage the scientific synergy afforded by "Swift," "Fermi," and "IceCube," while pursuing new vistas enabled by in situ instruments aboard the International Space Station (ISS). In this context, multi-messenger astronomy, which includes the detection of photons and neutrinos over cosmological baselines, may optimize the discovery potential toward keystone breakthroughs in fundamental physics, with possible implications for biophysics. Lastly, he will argue for an urgent national need to proactively initiate "our generation’s Sputnik moment," through bipartisan-supported self-investments in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research and education, which have historically provided an economic catalyst and geopolitical leverage while serving as a source of inspiration for the next generation of explorers, thus helping to preserve the redundancy of "American Exceptionalism."