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The main speaker at this meeting will be joining us inperson.
Surfing the (Gravitational) Waves!
After millennia of observing the Universe with light (a.k.a. electromagnetic waves), over the past decade, an entirely new way of viewing the Universe has been developed. This approach relies on *gravitational waves*, slight distortions in the Universe that result from the motions of some of the densest and most massive objects. In this presentation, Dr. Lazio introduces (gently) the study of gravitational waves and how astronomers can detect them, then turns to emerging results about pairs of monster black holes in the (nearby) Universe and efforts to find more of them.
Dr. Joseph Lazio studied at Cornell University, then has had staff positions at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of Michigan. Along the way, he was one of the founding members of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), has served as Deputy Director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute, the Project Scientist for the international Square Kilometre Array, the Project Scientist for NASA’s Deep Space Network, and the Project Scientist for NASA’s Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE).
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