December 8, 2023 7-9PM

Event Type: Lecture and Stargazing
Title: The Galactic Underworld: The Milky Way’s Sea of Dormant Black Holes
Lecturer: Kareem El-Badry
Position: Professor
Institution: Caltech
Abstract:
About 100 million black holes are thought to lurk in the Milky Way. The vast majority of these black holes — which are corpses of long-dead generations of massive stars — emit no detectable light and only very rarely interact with their surroundings. I will describe how astronomers know this vast population of quiet black holes exists and how large-scale surveys of the Milky Way are beginning to detect the black holes' gravitational effects. I will also discuss relation between these nearby black holes and those being discovered by gravitational wave detectors.