Northwestern Events Calendar

Apr
5
2019

Heilborn Lectures: Exploring the Universe with Gravitational Waves

When: Friday, April 5, 2019
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT

Where: Technological Institute, Ryan Auditorium, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Pamela Villalovoz   (847) 491-3644

Group: Physics and Astronomy Colloquia

Category: Academic

Description:

The observations of gravitational waves from the mergers of compact binary sources opens a new way to learn about the universe as well as to test General Relativity in the limit of strong gravitational interactions – the dynamics of massive bodies traveling at relativistic speeds in a highly curved spacetime. The lecture will describe some of the difficult history of gravitational waves proposed about 100 years ago. The concepts used in the instruments and the methods for data analysis that enable the measurement of gravitational wave strains of 10-21 and smaller will be presented. The results derived from the measured waveforms, their relation to the Einstein field equations and the astrophysical implications are discussed. The talk will end with a vision for the future of gravitational wave astronomy.

Professor Rainer Weiss
Nobel Prize for physics, 2017
Professor of Physics (Emeritus) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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