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, Department of Statistics Seminar Series, Applied Physics, Department of Chemistry, LSA Biophysics, Special Events - Department of Mathematics, Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics Cosmology Astrophysics Seminars |
