News and Events
-
Can uncertainties in the evolution of the massive stars explain EM and GW observations?
Wednesday October 21st 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Poojan Agrawal Swinburne University Email: pagrawal[at]swin.edu.au Abstract Recent observations of galaxies and star clusters have highlighted the need for systematic studies dedicated to exploring the impact of uncertain parameters of stellar evolution on the properties of stellar populations. While the use of fitting formulae to stellar tracks remains a popular choice for modelling stellar evolution …
-
Probing the nature of dark matter with galaxy-galaxy strong gravitational lensing
Wednesday October 14th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Dorota Bayer Swinburne University Email: dbayer[at]swin.edu.au Abstract While a direct detection of the dark-matter particle remains very challenging, the nature of dark matter can potentially be constrained indirectly -- by comparing the properties of substructure in galactic haloes with predictions from the phenomenological dark-matter models, such as the cold, warm or hot dark matter. Whereas …
-
Real or not real? What cosmological simulations can (and cannot) tell us about the cold phase of the CGM
Wednesday September 30th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Dr Lilian Garratt-Smithson University of Western Australia Email: lilian.garratt-smithson[at]uwa.edu.au Abstract Simulations are now allowing us to probe the scales of the CGM (circumgalactic medium) around galaxies in order to look at the influence of realistic galaxy formation processes. However, it is apparent that the properties of the multi-phase CGM are not yet converged in simulations …
-
Precision weak lensing and the dispersion in the stellar-to-halo mass relation.
Wednesday September 16th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Pol Gurri Perez Swinburne University Email: pgurriperez@swin.edu.au Abstract Weak gravitational lensing provides an observational avenue to determine the relation between the halo mass and stellar mass of a galaxy. While we expect two galaxies with the same stellar mass to have different halos, at the moment, existing weak lensing studies are only sensitive to an …
-
IGM Attenuation Bias for Lyman Continuum Detected Galaxies at z > 3.0
Wednesday September 9th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Dr Rob Bassett Swinburne University Email: rbassett@swin.edu.au Abstract Understanding the sources responsible for driving reionization has been a major goal in astrophysics for many years. One critical measurement required is the ionizing (or Lyman continuum, LyC) escape fraction from observed galaxy samples. A major difficulty arises from the level of transmission of LyC through the …
-
Probing neural networks for science: What is it they are learning?
Wednesday August 26th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Dr Colin Jacobs Swinburne University Email: colinjacobs@swin.edu.au Abstract Neural Networks are finding increasing use in many areas of astronomy, but often act as "black boxes". Many techniques exist to probe in the internals of neural networks but not all are relevant to scientists. In this talk I discuss some of the techniques developed in computer …
-
Heavy Puzzle Pieces: Nucleosynthesis Models of the Intermediate Neutron-capture Process
Wednesday July 22nd 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Melanie Hampel Monash University Email: melanie.hampel@monash.edu Abstract The quest for the origin of the elements in the universe combines different fields of physics and astronomy, from the smallest scales of nuclear reactions to large scales of giant stars. To understand the chemical history of our universe the abundances of elements heavier than iron are observed …
-
Observational consequences of binary neutron star merger remnants
Wednesday June 17th 2020 @12pm, Zoom Colloquium Nikhil Sarin Monash University Email: nikhil.sarin@monash.edu Abstract The first neutron star merger observed with gravitational waves and in electromagnetic radiation confirmed that binary neutron star mergers are the progenitors of at least some short gamma-ray bursts. The multi-messenger observations have been used to a probe a lot of fundamental physics, however, despite the wealth of …
A list of recent colloquia, with slides in some cases, can be found here.