How to detect ripples in spacetime with a planet-finding telescope

Until recently, almost everything we've known about the Universe came from light. Whether it’s radio waves, visible light, or high-energy gamma rays, light has been our messenger. But over the last decade, we've been able to measure a new messenger: gravitational waves. These tiny ripples in spacetime have opened up an entirely new way to study our Universe, and especially black holes. In this talk, Dr. Pardo walk through how we’re able to measure such incredibly small distortions of space, and a bit about what they’ve revealed about black holes. He will then discuss new efforts to measure gravitational waves by looking at small, apparent changes in star positions, as measured by the planet-finding Kepler Space Telescope.

Kris Pardo, University of Southern California

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