Searching for Lumbering Giants with Nature's Best Clocks

Searching for Lumbering Giants with Nature's Best Clocks

Presentation description:

Gravitational waves have opened a new cosmic window, allowing us to see the darkest most compact objects in the universe. While ground-based detectors, like LIGO, can see black holes 40 to 50 times the mass of the Sun, there are giant black holes at the centers of galaxies that we are only beginning to understand. Pulsar timing arrays are galactic-scale gravitational wave detectors that use millisecond pulsars, nature's most stable clocks, to search for these lumbering giants.

Bio:
Jeffrey Hazboun, Ph.D is a gravitational astrophysicist working on the big data challenges of gravitational wave detection. He is interested in exploring questions about the make-up of the Universe and the history of galactic evolution using gravitational waves. He enjoys mentoring students in the machinery of data analysis, whitewater kayaking and playing banjo.

Note: NANOGrav has been in the news recently with some results, which, while still preliminary, are very exciting. We are pleased to have UW Bothell once again provide us with a speaker on gravitational physics. Dr. Joey Key presented on LIGO, December 2018.

Link to recent NANOGrav news: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/galaxy-size-gravitational-wave-detector-hints-at-exotic-physics/

NANOGrav site: http://nanograv.org/