August 17, 2018
Explore the Mystery of Black Holes and Gravitational Waves at Cernan Center’s Big Bang Event
A leading researcher on black holes and gravitational waves will be the featured speaker at the Triton College Cernan Earth and Space Center’s Big Bang Event on Saturday, Sept. 15.
Dr. Robert Owen will present "Gravitational Waves and Black Holes: Learning About the Universe From its Own Vibrations." Explorers of all ages will gain a new perspective as he delves into the revolutionary discoveries made by scientists in recent years by listening for vibrations of the fabric of the universe itself. Learn about the recent discoveries relating to black holes – the knots of tangled spacetime left over after stars collapse under their own weight – and what happens to pairs of black holes when they collide.
Dr. Owen will make three presentations of "Gravitational Waves and Black Holes: Learning About the Universe From its Own Vibrations" during the Big Bang Event on Saturday, Sept. 15.
Times, locations and details are as follows:
10:30 a.m. For middle and high school students. (Cernan Earth and Space Center)
1:30 p.m. For high school/college students and professionals. (Cernan Earth and Space Center)
7:30 p.m. For all ages. (Robert M. Collins Auditorium, R Building, East Campus)
Dr. Robert Owen is an assistant professor of physics at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He holds a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Owen carries out research in computational astrophysics and the mathematical theory of black holes. He is a member of the Simulating Extreme Spacetimes collaboration studying the details of black hole collisions to extract information from gravitational-wave data. He received the Cottrell Scholar Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement in 2015.
The Big Bang Event is open to the community and free to attend (donations are welcome). Reservations are requested. For more information or to RSVP, call (708) 456-0300, Ext. 3372, or visit triton.edu/Cernan.