Gabriela González - Einstein, Gravitational Waves, Black Holes, and Other Matters
April 28, 2018 - More than 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 U.S. 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. Several other gravitational waves from black holes were detected, including one by LIGO and the Virgo detector in Europe produced by two neutron stars giving birth to a black hole, also producing electromagnetic waves detected by many telescopes. González will describe the history and details of the observations, and the gravity-bright future of the field. González represents Class I.
