Astronomy Lecture w/ Nobel laureate Kip Thorne - An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe

Name: Astronomy Lecture w/ Nobel laureate Kip Thorne - An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe
Start: 2024-07-12T20:00:00-07:00
Location: Caltech Beckman Auditorium

Schedule

Fri Jul 12 2024 at 08:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Caltech Beckman Auditorium | Pasadena, CA

UPDATE: Free tickets have now "sold out", but we'll still have a standby line at the door, which begins seating 15-minutes before start of event to account for no shows. All ticket-holders must arrive by 7:45 to ensure they get seated.
Join us for this special 100th Stargazing Lecture, featuring Nobel laureate Kip Thorne. Among his many accomplishments, Dr. Thorne was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize for his role in the LIGO project to detect the first gravitational waves He also served as technical advisor on several films, including Tenet, Oppenheimer, and Interstellar. We will host a 30-minute public-level lecture discussing black holes, quantum fluctuations, and other surprising, counterintuitive phenomena in our universe. The lecture will be followed by a panel Q&A consisting of several astrophysicists to answer your questions about astrophysics and space science.
This public astronomy event will be hosted both in-person as well as live-streamed over YouTube Live. The lecture will be 30 minutes, followed by a 90-minute session of telescope-aided stargazing and a Q&A Panel consisting of experts in the department on a variety of astronomy and astrophysical topics. You can attend in person or interact with us through the YouTube interface. Lecture will be hosted at new location: Beckman Auditorium on Caltech's campus. Event is free and open to all. Free tickets are required to attend in-person, register now at: https://ci.ovationtix.com/36761/production/1205236?performanceId=11487590
For more information including a link to the YouTube Livestream and directions to Caltech, visit our webpage: http://outreach.astro.caltech.edu
Title: An Odyssey Through the Warped Side of Our Universe
Lecturer: Kip Thorne
Abstract:
"In the sixty-odd years of my career in astrophysics, we have come to understand that our universe has a very rich warped side. By this I mean objects and phenomena made from warped spacetime instead of from matter. In this lecture, I will describe some of what we have learned. For example: weird facets of black holes that you may not have not heard of before. And also likely new to you: voracious, ‘vacuum fluctuations’ — tiny bits of everything that ever could inhabit our universe, flashing in and out of existence, randomly. These fluctuations suck energy from rapidly distorting spacetime and use it to convert themselves into real, material stuff."