Astrophiz 56 - Prof Matthew Bailes - Magnetars, Supercomputers & Gravitational Waves
b"In this episode we hear about weird Magnetars, Supercomputers and Gravitational Wave discoveries from Professor \\xa0Matthew Bailes. \\n\\nDr Bailes\\xa0\\xa0is the founder and Director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).\\xa0He is an advisor to the Breakthrough Listen project\\xa0as well as leading the\\xa0MeerTIME\\xa0project. His team also developed a supercomputer for the 50 year-old Molonglo telescope to transform it into a pulsar timing and FRB discovery machine.We should note here that Duncan Lorimer and Professor Bailes \\xa0were the original discoverers of FRBs, Fast Radio Bursts, which we have featured in a few previous episodes. \\xa0Dr Bailes has a huge number of papers published with 16 thousand professional citations in Astrophysics journals.\\xa0 Most recently he is co-author of a paper about some puzzling discoveries about a re-awakening magnetar, using instruments including the new SKA precursor MeerKAT telescopes in South Africa, the iconic Parkes dish in Australia and the Chandra and Swift space-based instruments.\\xa0\\n\\nFor astrophotographers and amateur astronomers, Dr Ian 'Astroblug' Musgrave tells us what's currently up, and what to look for in the night and morning skies. In 'Ian's tangent' we look at the reprisal of 'Lost in Space' and how pulsars can be a real-life GPS system for spacecraft anywhere in the universe.\\n\\nIn the News:\\nSKA updated with a doubling of MWA antennas\\nChina's upcoming soft landing of rovers on the 'dark side of the moon'\\nThe mystery of the origins of pulsar pulses uncovered by Russian team"