Astro Night

Thu, July 05, 2018

Title: “The Most Powerful Explosions in 3D”

 

Description:

The deaths of massive stars in supernova explosions belong to the most energetic and luminous events in the universe. They generate the explosive power of a few trillion times the mass of the earth in TNT, but more importantly enrich the universe with heavy elements that are the building blocks of stars, planets, and ultimately life. In this presentation, I will show what we can learn about the astrophysics of these explosions with state-of-the-art 3D simulations that are run on up to 100,000 computer processors in parallel, and will pay particular attention to how we can use these simulations to reveal the powerful engines driving these explosions.

 

Bio: 

Philipp Moesta grew up in Kassel, Germany and earned his PhD in Astrophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, Germany. He then spent 3 years as a postdoctoral fellow in theoretical astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology before joining the Berkeley Astronomy department as an Einstein fellow. Philipp's research focuses mainly on studying magnetic fields in supernova explosions and compact object mergers via 3D numerical simulations.