Public lecture on “Gravitational-wave science” and panel “Ask a scientist”
When black holes or neutron stars —extremely compact objects born out of massive stars— collide, they produce ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. In the first talk you will hear about gravitational waves, the “whispers” of the dark universe, where they come from and how we use them to explore long-standing mysteries of our universe. In the second talk, you will also hear about how we detect gravitational waves, the engineering intricacies that make our detectors incredibly sensitive and how we plan to improve them in the future. The talks are followed by a discussion panel in which you get to “Ask a scientist” about gravitational wave science, but also how and why they became a scientist.
Date: Wednesday, July 2, 12:45 to 14:15 pm.
Location: Beckman Institute Auditorium (Room 1025).
Speakers: Bangalore Sathyaprakash (Elsbach Professor of Physics and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pennsylvania State University) and Lisa Barsotti (Senior Research Scientist, MIT).
Panelists: Lisa Barsotti, Joey S. Key (Associate Professor, University of Washington, Bothell), Chloe Richards (PhD Student, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Bangalore Sathyaprakash, and David Shoemaker (Senior Research Scientist, MIT).
Although this lecture is free, we still ask you to please register HERE.