Regular Monthly Members/Society night, SECOND Monday of each month.
**IMPORTANT: Now that it is 2023, the Regular Monthly Monday Members night is the SECOND Monday of the Month.

This Month (March 13th):

Topic: What leads to hyper-luminous supernovae and supermassive black holes?
With guest speaker: Sohan Ghodla (Ph.D. student in the physics dept. at the University of Auckland)

Accretion disks are regions of localized mass and angular momentum that rotate around a massive central object. They are ubiquitous in astrophysics and are influential right from the process of star formation to the growth of supermassive black holes. Here in particular I will explain their role in the formation of very energetic stellar explosions such as superluminous supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. Additionally, I will discuss their importance in producing rapidly rotating and/or supermassive black holes.

I'm (Sohan Ghodla) a Ph.D. student in the physics department at the University of Auckland. My current research includes the study of stellar evolution, accretion disks, and gravitational wave sources.