On September 14th, 2015, the two sites of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory detected minuscule ripples in the fabric of space. This Nobel-winning accomplishment, the culmination of nearly 50 years of work, also provided us with a new window into the Universe: gravitational waves. I will discuss some of the first results from LIGO, and how we think you can get two black holes close enough in space to emit gravitational waves. I will also discuss a second discovery enabled by gravitational waves of merging neutron stars, which provided for the first time evidence for the origin of many heavy metals in the Universe.
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Dr. Carl Rodriguez [he/him]
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy
University of North Carolina
This is a virtual presentation by Dr. Rodriguez – join him virtually using Google Meet
Join virtually using Google Meet:
Video call link: meet.google.com/cbf-jusw-dsm
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7:00 pm Join the online meeting for participant open discussion
7:30 pm NOVAC news, announcements and events
8:00-9:00 pm Dr. Rodriguez’s presentation
Presentation Details
Talk Title: The Dark Side of the Universe
Biography:
Dr. Carl Rodriguez is an assistant professor of physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a position he has had since spring 2023. He completed his Ph.D. at Northwestern University in 2016, working with Prof. Fred Rasio, before moving on to be a Pappalardo Fellow at MIT (2016-2019), an ITC Fellow at Harvard (2019-2020), and an assistant professorship at Carnegie Mellon University (2020-2022). He is Principal Investigator of the stellar dynamics, stellar evolution, black holes, and gravitational waves group at UNC, currently supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. He is the recipient the 2023 Vera Rubin Early Career Prize from the AAS Division of Dynamical Astronomy and the 2024 Helen B. Warner Prize from the AAS. Carl is originally from Shreveport, Louisiana.
