Astronomy on Tap Corvallis: How to detect ripples in spacetime

Join us on Tuesday November 11th at 7pm for a talk by Dr. Kris Pardo from the University of Southern California. His talk is titled:

How to detect ripples in spacetime

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, I’ll walk through how we’re able to measure such incredibly small distortions of space, a bit about what they’ve revealed about black holes, and what they’re starting to teach us about the nature of gravity itself.

About Dr. Pardo

Kris Pardo is an Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Southern California. He earned his PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University. He was then a postdoc at the Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech before joining USC. When he’s not working, he is catering to the every whim of his Australian Shepherd, Sienna.