In this blog I post news about my research or discuss news in astrophysics that involve compact objects, i.e., black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs. I’ve now decided to start a new experiment and post summaries of fresh information that I gather while attending conferences and meetings around the World. This is not something really new, but it’s new for me, so I hope the experiment turns out to be a good one.
The first such event happens tomorrow (2014 February 7) and it is held around the corner (ASTRON): the 3rd Dutch astronomical meeting on gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are a hot topic in astrophysics, as they have been predicted by Einstein about 98 years ago (!) and have still not been directly detected. There are many indirect pieces of evidence for their existence but finding them directly (i.e., detecting the gravitational wave itself and measuring its properties) is a formidable technological challenge. Tomorrow we will hear the latest news about:
- the development of one of the most sensitive next-generation gravitational wave detectors (Advanced Virgo) and the status of the BlackGem telescope array
- a description of the recently funded ESA mission eLISA, a futuristic space gravitational wave detector that will fly in the future.
- an ingenious attempt of detecting gravitational waves by using pulsars as precise clocks
- the exploitation of a recently discovered triple pulsar system to test Einstein’s theory of General Relativity with unprecedented precision…
- …and much more!
The news will be posted in real-time on my Twitter account @astropatruno
from 11 am until 5 pm (or you can follow the updates directly on my blog).
Leave a Reply