WATCH: CCA Special Talk with Roger Blandford

Title: Extreme Astrophysics

Abstract: The electromagnetic spectrum has been opened up from meter radio waves to 100 TeV photons and augmented with 10 – 300 Hz gravitational wave, MeV – PeV neutrinos and MeV – ZeV (160 J) cosmic ray messages. Consequently, there is a high rate of discovery and understanding of phenomena whose explanation invokes accepted physics – classical (including general relativity), atomic, nuclear and particle (including QED) processes – in extreme environments. The richness of the discovery space can be epitomized by describing some new observations and ideas pertaining to relativistic jets formed by massive spinning black holes, Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays accelerated by strong shock waves surrounding rich clusters of galaxies and Fast Radio Bursts, generated by neutron stars with 100 GT magnetic fields.