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LDAS Monthly Meeting – The crash that shook the Universe: detecting waves in space and time
28 June 2023 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Tonights talk will be given by our Honorary President, from the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, Matt Bothwell on the subject of gravity waves. Matt will give his talk via Zoom. A major announcement is due on 1st July regarding a new gravity wave discovery so Matt’s talk is very timely. Matt is an excellent speaker and his talks are highly recommended.
Astronomy is the oldest science. The first astronomers had to use their eyes to study the night sky: the invention of the telescope, around 400 years ago, was a scientific revolution which allowed us to see a whole new — previously hidden — Universe. Another genuine revolution happened around a century ago, when radio astronomers discovered how to harness electromagnetic waves beyond visible light to understand the cosmos around us. The third grand revolution in astronomy happened on the 14th of September 2015. That was the date that humanity detected our first ‘gravitational wave’: a completely new way to see the Universe. As with every grand astronomical revolution, this discovery has opened an entirely new window to the cosmos.
Matt will talk all about that discovery: how it happened, what we saw, and what comes next.
Dr Matthew Bothwell is Honorary President and an Astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy and the Kavli Institute for Cosmology at the Univ of Cambridge running outreach in the position of ‘Public Astronomer’.
He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge (2007-2011) and then PostDoc’ed at the Steward Observatory, Univ of Arizona,/Astrophysics group before returning to Cambridge. He was a course tutor teaching various undergraduate-level astronomy courses and introductory astronomy material for summer school students.
Matt is on over 65 research publications with his current research interests being High-redshift dusty galaxies and Local scaling relations. I can recommend his book on the introduction to the hidden universe (The Invisible Universe: Why There’s More to Reality than Meets the Eye Paperback – 11 Aug. 2022, ISBN-13 : 978-0861544387).
There will be a refreshment break and an astronomy news update from Gordon Ewen.
The meeting will also be broadcast via Zoom, details will be sent nearer the meeting. This months talk is free of charge.