Description:

Carl Rodriguez -- Black Holes Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters

Abstract: The gravitational million-body problem is one of the most challenging technical problems in collisional stellar dynamics.  Even state-of-the-art N-body integrators frequently require more than a year to fully model the dynamics of a single globular cluster over its 12Gyr lifespan; however, we can significantly accelerate these dynamical calculations by making very reasonable assumptions, enabling us to create realistic models of globular clusters within a few weeks.  In this talk, I will briefly describe our Monte Carlo code for stellar dynamics, focusing on a recent application to dynamically-formed black hole binaries and their implications for gravitational-wave telescopes.  I will also describe my recent work to create a new technique for modeling dense star clusters, which combines the speed of our Monte Carlo code with the precision of a direct N-body integration.
 

Matt McCrory -- Science Visualization at Northwestern

Abstract: Translating scientific data into meaningful imagery is key to the rapid understanding and dissemination of quantitative, complex, or abstract ideas, but it can also be a challenging process for those who haven’t spent considerable time learning the specialized tools and methods that effective visualizations require.  Matt McCrory of Northwestern’s Research Computing group leads a small team of industry artists and engineers as they help researchers at Northwestern turn their simulated, real-world, or hypothetical data into meaningful visual representations.  Matt will present some basic background about science visualization, discuss some of the resources available to NU researchers in need of visualizations, and provide some insight into future trends and technologies.

Pizza will be available for $2/slice.