Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

We are the first generation of human beings able to directly observe and study the cosmic era when the first galaxies and black holes formed. Quasars are among the most luminous sources known and can be studied in detail even during the first...

New technology and a lack of regulation are allowing massive swarms, or "constellations", of low-Earth communications satellites such as SpaceX's Starlinks to be launched at relatively low cost, leading to a dramatic rise in the number of satellites...

Modern astronomical spectrometers are approaching the exquisite sensitivity to detect the signature of an Earth-mass planet around stars like the Sun. I shall discuss the challenges involved in making these difficult measurements with the Doppler...

Relativistic Jets emanating from Black Holes (BH) of active galaxies are believed to be among the most extreme particle accelerators and very high energy (VHE) emitters in the universe. Only lately, combining theory, numerical simulations and...

We develop a general approach to "interpret" what a network has learned by introducing strong inductive biases. In particular, we focus on Graph Neural Networks.
The technique works as follows: we first encourage sparse latent representations when...

Among a handful of mysteries in the LambdaCDM paradigm of cosmology, I focus on three: Dark Matter, Baryogenesis and the origin of structure. I then provide a pedagogical introduction to Chiral Gravity and show how these three mysteries may be...

Uncovering the physics of galaxy evolution has been a longstanding problem for astronomers.  Physical galaxy properties like the star formation rate, stellar mass, and metallicity can tell us not only how these properties change over generations of...

Uncovering the physics of galaxy evolution has been a longstanding problem for astronomers. Physical galaxy properties like the star formation rate, stellar mass, and metallicity can tell us not only how these properties change over generations of...

What governs whether large-scale planetary habitability is sustained through time? Lakes, valley networks, groundwaters, hydrothermal systems, and chemically open-system weathering once existed on Mars. The suite of aqueous environments preserved in...

I will present the cosmological weak lensing results from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) using its first three years of data, taken on the 4m Blanco telescope at CTIO. This analysis spans the full DES footprint, more than 4000 sq. deg. of sky, with...