Astrophysics Seminar this Saturday - Big Star deaths and what it could mean for Earth

 An interesting topic if you like astrophysics will be this Saturday, from UIUC.

Join nuclear and particle astrophysicist, Prof. Brian Fields, for the second Saturday Physics for Everyone (SPE) lecture.
The most massive stars are the celebrities of the cosmos: they represent a small fraction of all stars, but live extravagant lives and die in spectacular and violent supernova explosions. While these events are awesome to observe, they can take a sinister shade when they occur closer to home, because an explosion within a certain "minimum safe distance" would pose a grave threat to Earthlings. We will discuss these cosmic threats to life, and show compelling evidence of a “near-miss” supernova from 3 million years ago that rained its debris upon the Earth. This amazing discovery allows us to study supernova ashes in the laboratory and confirms that nearby explosions are a fact of life in our Galaxy. We, therefore, press further, presenting recent evidence that supernova explosions could have caused biological extinctions on Earth around 360 million years ago. We conclude with tests of this hypothesis, including the search for trace amounts of radioactive supernova byproducts in fossils that witnessed the end of the Devonian period.

  Check it out and register for the webinar!