Astrophysics Seminars

Recent, remarkable images made by the EHT collaboration exhibit a ring of emission, presumably orbiting a six billion solar mass black hole. It is proposed that what is observed is not a gas torus but an extensive “ ergomagnetosphere" that connects...

The discoveries of gravitational waves from binary black hole and binary neutron star coalescences suggest these sources will be observed in large numbers by advanced detectors. Thanks to these observations, individual systems and the underlying...

A microquasar is a black hole X-ray binary with outflowing jets. Conventional theory predicts alignment between three axes of a microquasar system: the black hole spin axis, the jet axis, and the rotational axis of the inner disk regions. However...

Upcoming surveys will map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization with unprecedented precision. These observations will allow for huge strides forward toward well established scientific targets and will create...

CHIME will use Intensity Mapping of the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen to map large-scale structure between redshifts of 0.8 and 2.5. By measuring Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) we will place constraints on the dark energy equation of state as it...

Multi-messenger astronomy coupling gravitational waves and light was born with the detection of the first neutron star merger, GW170817. This discovery signaled a wealth of firsts in physics and astronomy and represents only the tip of the iceberg...

This informal seminar will highlight results obtained recently with the transformational instruments MUSE and GRAVITY on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal. For MUSE, the focus will be on an ongoing study of the internal dynamics, stellar...

The Event Horizon Telescope recently revealed the first picture of the black-hole shadow in the center of the M87 galaxy. I will discuss the technological and theoretical advances during the last decade that led to this result. I will then focus on...

State-of-the-art local and primordial measurements of the Hubble constant (H0) are currently in tension at the 4.4 sigma level. New physics and systematic errors have been invoked as potential explanations. I will discuss two new, independent...

There is now ample evidence of large quantities of planetesimal material present in orbits extending outwards from Jupiter and beyond. Several research groups have shown that as much as 15% of such material currently in orbits residing between...