2025 Ta-You Wu Lecture in Physics | Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Black Holes and Other Matters
Gabriela González, Boyd Professor of Physics (Louisiana State University)
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
4:00-5:00 PM
Fourth Floor Ampitheatre
Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.)
Map
Join us in person for this lecture, or tune in via livestream at:
https://myumi.ch/MkzmE
More than a hundred years ago, Einstein predicted that there were ripples in the fabric of space-time traveling at the speed of light: gravitational waves. On September 14, 2015, the LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana in the US registered for the first time ever a loud gravitational wave signal traveling through Earth, created more than a billion years ago by the merger of two black holes. A spectacular signal was detected by LIGO and the Virgo detector in Europe in 2017, produced by the collision of two neutron stars, giving birth to a black hole, generating also electromagnetic waves (light!) detected by many telescopes and helping us understand the origin of gold. In only a few years from the first detection, there are now hundreds of new signals from mergers of black holes and/or neutron stars - this is the era of gravitational wave astronomy. We will describe the history and details of the observations, and the gravity-bright future of the field.
Each fall, the University of Michigan Physics Department hosts the Ta-You Wu Lecture, one of the most prestigious lecture events in the Department. It is named in honor of Michigan Physics alumnus and honorary Doctor of Science, Ta-You Wu.
For more information, please visit https://myumi.ch/D8zD1
More than a hundred years ago, Einstein predicted that there were ripples in the fabric of space-time traveling at the speed of light: gravitational waves. On September 14, 2015, the LIGO detectors in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana in the US registered for the first time ever a loud gravitational wave signal traveling through Earth, created more than a billion years ago by the merger of two black holes. A spectacular signal was detected by LIGO and the Virgo detector in Europe in 2017, produced by the collision of two neutron stars, giving birth to a black hole, generating also electromagnetic waves (light!) detected by many telescopes and helping us understand the origin of gold. In only a few years from the first detection, there are now hundreds of new signals from mergers of black holes and/or neutron stars - this is the era of gravitational wave astronomy. We will describe the history and details of the observations, and the gravity-bright future of the field.
Each fall, the University of Michigan Physics Department hosts the Ta-You Wu Lecture, one of the most prestigious lecture events in the Department. It is named in honor of Michigan Physics alumnus and honorary Doctor of Science, Ta-You Wu.
For more information, please visit https://myumi.ch/D8zD1
| Building: | Rackham Graduate School (Horace H.) |
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| Website: | |
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Aem Featured, Astronomy, Engineering, Free, Graduate And Professional Students, Graduate Students, Lecture, Lifelong Learning, Natural Sciences, Physics, Prospective Graduate Students, Smoke-free, Talk, Undergraduate Students |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Department of Physics, Department of Astronomy, The Center for the Study of Complex Systems, LSA AEM, Department of Statistics Seminar Series, Applied Physics, Department of Chemistry, LSA Biophysics, Undergrad Physics Events, Special Events - Department of Mathematics, Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics Cosmology Astrophysics Seminars |
