Time: Monday, April 16th, 2018, at 14:30
Location: FCUL, building C8, room 8.2.11
Speaker:
Christopher Moore (CENTRA)
Abstract:
In the last few of years the LIGO and Virgo observatories have begun to detect gravitational waves from the coalescence of pairs of black holes and neutron stars. In this talk I will briefly describe the principles behind Laser Interferometry (the technique used by both LIGO and Virgo to detect gravitational waves). I will then describe some of the groundbreaking first discoveries, discuss their astrophysical significance, and present some unanswered questions and prospects for the future.