Prof. Tara Murphy is an

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

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 The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

. Murphy led a group that first confirmed radio emissions from the 2017

Neutron Star Merger A neutron star merger is the stellar collision of neutron stars. When two neutron stars fall into mutual orbit, they gradually inspiral, spiral inward due to the loss of energy emitted as gravitational radiation. When they finally meet, their me ...

event which provided evidence for a global scientific announcement in the field of

gravitational waves Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1893 and then later by H ...

Education

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

Career

In 2013, Murphy co-founded a start-up company called Grok Learning with James Curran, Nicky Ringland and Tim Dawborn which is an online learning platform that teaches computing to school students. During the global effort to record the 2017

, Murphy led a group at the

that confirmed the first radio signals of

gravitational wave Gravitational waves are oscillations of the gravitational field that Wave propagation, travel through space at the speed of light; they are generated by the relative motion of gravity, gravitating masses. They were proposed by Oliver Heaviside i ...

s that were caused by two neutron stars colliding in a galaxy 130 million

light-year A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly , which is approximately 9.46 trillion km or 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astr ...

s from

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. This discovery was made 15 days after these gravitational waves were first reported by an international team of scientists and astronomers. In 2019, Murphy and their PhD student gathered data using the CSIRO's

Australia Telescope Compact Array The Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) is a radio telescope operated by CSIRO at the Paul Wild Observatory, twenty five kilometres (16 mi) west of the town of Narrabri in New South Wales, Australia. Its opening ceremony took place on ...

Narrabri Narrabri ( ) is a locality and seat of Narrabri Shire Local government in Australia, local government area in the North West Slopes, New South Wales, Australia on the Namoi River, northwest of Sydney. It sits on the junction of the Kamilaroi Hi ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

to observe radio emissions created by a

shockwave In physics, a shock wave (also spelled shockwave), or shock, is a type of propagating disturbance that moves faster than the local speed of sound in the medium. Like an ordinary wave, a shock wave carries energy and can propagate through a me ...

from a mysterious cosmic 'cow' explosion, and potential birth of a black hole. Their findings suggested that there was a

magnetar A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field (~109 to 1011 T, ~1013 to 1015 G). The magnetic-field decay powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.Ward; Br ...

at the core of the

supernova A supernova (: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last stellar evolution, evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion ...

, and that this event was different from the typical

as there was energy that continued to power the explosion allowing the 'cow' to inexplicably become brighter with time.

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"''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Murphy, Tara Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Sydney alumni Academic staff of the University of Sydney Australian astrophysicists 21st-century Australian astronomers