Tara Murphy

Prof. Tara Murphy is an Australian Astrophysicist and CAASTRO (the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics) chief investigator working in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.[1][2] Murphy led a group that first confirmed radio emissions from the 2017 Neutron Star Merger event which provided evidence for a global scientific announcement in the field of gravitational waves.[3]

Education

Murphy completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Sydney and a PhD (Astrophysics) at the University of Edinburgh.[4]

Career

In 2013, Murphy co-founded a start-up company called Grok Learning which promotes the easy learning of computational methods to high school students (and teachers).[4]

During the global effort to record the 2017 Neutron Star Merger,[5][6] Murphy led a group at the University of Sydney that confirmed the first radio signals of gravitational waves that were caused by two neutron stars colliding in a galaxy 130 million light-years from Earth. This discovery was made 15 days after these gravitational waves were first reported by an international team of scientists and astronomers.[3]

In 2019, Murphy and their PhD student gathered data using the CSIRO's Australia Telescope Compact Array at Narrabri in New South Wales to observe radio emissions created by a shockwave from a mysterious cosmic 'cow' explosion, and potential birth of a black hole. Their findings suggested that there was a magnetar at the core of the supernova, and that this event was different from the typical supernova as there was energy that continued to power the explosion allowing the 'cow' to inexplicably become brighter with time.[7]

Honours and recognition
  • 2019 ARC Discovery Project: "Radio follow-up of gravitational wave events"
  • 2016 ARC Future Fellow: "The radio transient sky in real time"
  • 2012 Young Tall Poppy Award
  • 2011 ARC Discovery Project: "Extreme Events: Mining the Radio Sky for Gamma-ray Bursts with Intelligent Algorithms"
  • 2010 ARC Super Science: "New Dimensions in Radio Astronomy: Mining Sparse Datasets with the Australian SKA Pathfinder"[8][4]

References
  1. Slezak, Michael (2017-10-16). "Neutron stars collision: Australian science reacts – as it happened". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  2. "2014 Australian Frontiers of Science - participants | Australian Academy of Science". www.science.org.au. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  3. "Gravitational waves: Australian scientists first to confirm radio signals from two colliding stars". SBS News. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  4. "Women in Astronomy: The Contemporary Women in Astronomy". Observations. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  5. correspondent, Hannah Devlin Science (2017-10-16). "New frontier for science as astronomers witness neutron stars colliding". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  6. October 2017, Steve Spaleta 16. "When Neutron Stars Collide! What the Hubble Telescope and Others Saw (Videos)". Space.com. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  7. "Astronomers may have seen the birth of a black hole for the first time". www.abc.net.au. 2019-01-10. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
  8. "Tara Murphy". The Conversation. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
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