Docent Lecture: Astronomy with Gravitational Waves
by
Chad Finley(Stockholm University)
→
Europe/Stockholm
FB54
FB54
Description
With the first direct detection of gravitational waves announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations this year, a technological triumph is suddenly in the spotlight. It required a half-century of marvelous and determined effort to measure in the lab what Einstein recognized as virtually impossible to measure. Looking ahead, the detection is even more significant as the beginning of a new kind of astronomy, in which we can observe (or we might say, listen to) the universe in a new way.
With this first detection we have discovered that black hole pairs exist, and moreover witnessed two black holes merging into one during a fraction of a second. In this lecture I will discuss this first direct detection of gravitational waves and describe some examples of how the observed signal is decoded to reveal information about the source. The lecture will rely primarily on undergraduate physics and will be accessible to undergraduate students.
