CANCELLLED

Physical Society Colloquium

Magnetars — the Gifts that Keep on Giving
or Why You Should Attend Colloquia Outside Your Comfort Zone

Victoria Kaspi

Department of Physics
McGill University

Magnetars, highly volatile young neutron stars bearing the Universe's strongest known magnetic fields, once doubted as being physical, are today fully recognized as genuine astrophysical sources, and are even invoked to explain a variety of high-energy astrophysical phenomena.I will describe magnetars' journey from fancy to familiar, a tale of victory on both theoretical and observational fronts.Finally, I will show recent results from the newly commissioned CHIME telescope that demonstrate that magnetars likely hold part of the key to the mysterious phenomenon of Fast Radio Bursts.