Listening to the Universe Vibrate: The New Dark Astronomy

This class will take place on May 2, 2:30-4:30p.m., on Zoom, with renowned physicist Gary Sanders. Gary is offering a second, unmissable class on May 9! Click here to find out more.

Astronomy has always been done with electromagnetic waves (light, radio waves, microwaves, x-rays, gamma rays). But much of the universe is dark. And it is massive and, in places, enormously violent. To reveal this universe, ripples in the fabric of space-time, gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein in 1916, were detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2014. In the audio frequencies, these waves enable us to listen and draw a new map of a surprising universe. Space- time, intuitively the nothingness of the universe, is a rich and energetic medium that we live in. It is now the basis of a new multi-messenger astronomy that will be described by physicist Gary Sanders.

Topics covered will include:

• Traditional astronomy with light
• Nothingness, the vacuum, quantum aspects of the vacuum, space-time
• General Relativity and gravitational waves
• The challenge of detecting gravitational waves
• The birth trauma of gravitational wave searches
• How LIGO changed the game plan and made the detection
• First discoveries from listening to the universe

Suggested Reading:

Click here to view and read the LIGO website.