Dr. Astrid Lamberts, Caltech.
Listening to Binary Stars Through Cosmic History

With the first detections of gravitational waves, it has now become possible to “listen” to the final stages of binary black holes and neutron stars. These systems are the remnants of massive stars that likely formed billions of years before the gravitational wave event. At that time the Universe was very different from now. If we want to use gravitational wave events to understand how massive binary stars evolve, it is very important to model the conditions of their formation throughout cosmic history.

In this talk I will explain where (small galaxy or large galaxy like the Milky Way?) and when (how many billion years ago?) the progenitor stars of the first gravitational wave event most likely formed. I will also show that there are several million binary black holes in our own Milky Way and how we may be able to detect some of them.