To show graduate students how to critically read, evaluate, write, and referee scientific papers. Students will become familiar with frontiers of research, develop independent ideas for research, and gain experience in making effective public oral presentations at conferences, interviews, and other professional venues.

Astrophysics Seminar - "Supernovae"

ASTR 6000 is the graduate astrophysics seminar, tied to this semester's course on High-Energy Astrophysics (ASTR 5710). After an introduction to the topic by the instructors (first two meetings), the students will read, present, and discuss scientific papers on various aspects of Supernovae, which mark the final stage of many stars' lives, at the endpoint of stellar evolution. These explosions come in many types and from several mechanisms, including gravitational core collapse of massive stars, accretion-driven thermonuclear explosions of white dwarf binaries, and pair-production pulsational instability in the core collapse of very massive stars. This seminar will cover current research papers on observations, explosion mechanisms, SN nucleosynthesis, and radiative emission processes. We will also discuss supernova remnants, as observed at high energy (X-ray and gamma-ray), and the connections between SNe and Gamma-Ray Bursts. Finally, we will discuss the use of Type Ia supernovae as "standard candles" for cosmological distance measurements. For those who want to start reading about Supernovae and Supernova Remnants (SNRs), this list below gives three review papers, followed by two websites with general background on SNe and SNRs (written for the public). Just click on the underlined links.