Hunt for Gravitational Waves: A story spanning the frequencies of space-time

Come join us for our monthly Astronomy talk!
7:30pm-8pm: Social time with snacks

8pm: Talk begins

Title: Hunt for Gravitational Waves: A story spanning the frequencies of space-time

Abstract: Gravitational Waves are the ripples in the fabric of space-time created by some of the most violent dances in the universe between heavy, dense and extreme objects called compact binaries. Compact objects include star remnants such as white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. When two of such compact objects get trapped into each other they spiral with increasing speed towards their shared center and eventually collide, forming strong ripples in space-time that we detect from earth.

There have been many efforts in GW detection since the 1900s, the most recent and famous of which is LIGO. But there are also upcoming missions such as the LISA mission spearheaded by the ESA and the NANOGrav collaboration’s work on pulsar timing arrays. In this talk, we will see an overview of the targets, data analysis pipelines and upcoming research in each of these three quests.

Bio: Shan Parmar is a Post-Bac Intern at the dept. of Astronomy at Cornell University and works on radio astronomy, computational imaging and electric space propulsion. He finished his undergrad in India from Marwadi University in the small town of Rajkot where he grew up most part of his life. Shan has strong interests in utilizing Machine Learning for Astrophysics research, specializing in gravitational waves

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