July 14, 2017 8-10PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: Understanding the Universe Using Gravitational Waves
Lecturer: Astrid Lamberts
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution: Caltech
Abstract: Last year LIGO announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves. This was a ground-breaking discovery, made possible by decades of effort by hundreds of scientists. The signal LIGO detected came from the merger of two black holes, each of them 30 times more massive than the Sun. These objects were unexpectedly massive and not predicted by theory. In this talk I will explain how such black holes could form and how future detections will improve our understanding of the most massive stars, from the Big Bang to the present.