Surfing the Universe: Cosmology with Gravitational Waves

Speaker: Professor Tessa Baker, Professor of Cosmology, University of Portsmouth

In this talk, we’ll journey into the new world of gravitational wave astronomy. First predicted by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are minute fluctuations in spacetime, the fundamental fabric of reality, and are produced by the most violent events in the universe. It took nearly a century for scientists to understand and build detectors sensitive enough to make the first breakthrough detection of them in 2015. Just nine years later, we detect them on a weekly basis.

We’ll talk in more detail about where gravitational waves come from, and some of the incredible detections to date. We’ll also understand how gravitational wave events can be used as tools to answer major questions in cosmology: how fast is the universe expanding? What is the true nature of dark energy? And is Einstein’s theory — which gave birth to gravitational waves themselves — really the complete picture of gravity?

About speaker:

Professor Tessa Baker is a cosmologist and gravitational wave astronomer. She hadn’t planned to be a cosmologist; but one day on the train to school she started reading a book about black holes, and thought they were just too awesome to leave alone. Tessa works on understanding the role of gravity in our universe: she develops tools to test ideas about modified gravity and dark energy models with gravitational waves and the large-scale cosmic web. When she’s not running a research team, she's out dancing salsa or hiking a long-distance trail.

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