Waves, explosions, and a rock-star physicist

The other night I met Tara Murphy. She's an Associate Professor of physics at Sydney University, and she's an astrophysicist who knows all about neutron stars, gravitational waves, radio astronomy, and how to give a riveting public lecture. She was also the winner of the Young Tall Poppy of the Year award in 2012 after all!

She was describing the spectacular events of August last year, when she and her team were among the first in the world to observe radio and gravitational waves coming from the same event.

Two neutron stars were circling each other 130 million years ago, spiralling in faster and faster until they collided with an incredible output of energy. After all this time the radio waves arrived here about a second after the gravitational ones, for reasons I've forgotten. Here's the sound (sort of) of the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu8dcMoTl4U 

She tells the story far better than I can, so take a look at this Sydney Uni piece on her work. An explanatory comic-strip mural which was created is included, and may assist: Gravitational waves breakthrough