We had an fascinating talk Professor Duncan Lorimer live from West Virginia on Zoom and YouTube about Fast Radio Bursts.

Talk video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/d3ayyhxlMMY

We had a really international audience including visitors from India and Texas, USA. There were a few News updates as well as information from Sean about our upcoming AGM:

  • Friday 2 October 2020 7:30pm via Zoom
  • Ask as many members as possible to attend
  • We will be voting remotely
  • We need to approve the draft annual report and accounts of the Society
  • We need to approve the draft minutes of the 2019 AGM
  • We need to elect Office Bearers and Members of the Council (11 in total)
  • Elect 5 Officers (President, 2 Vice President’s, Secretary and Treasurer) and elect 6 Councillors
  • Hold office till the 2021 AGM
  • Any member can nominate another member for Council. Nomination must be seconded by a different member
  • Nominations/seconding must be in writing to the Secretary email: secretary @ astronomyedinburgh.org
  • NOMINATION DEADLINE: Friday 11 September 2020 (21 days before AGM)

We also had the Sky in September from Alan Pickup.

Talk synopsis:

Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond-duration pulses of unknown origin that were discovered by an undergraduate student at West Virginia University in 2007. A decade on, with over 100 further bursts currently known, fast radio bursts remain enigmatic sources which parallel the early days of gamma-ray burst astronomy in the early 1970s. I will tell the story of their discovery, summarize what we know about them so far, describe the science opportunities these bursts present, and make predictions for what we might learn in the next decade.