Physics Colloquia

Hong Qi, PhD Candidate, UWM Department of Physics.
Studies in Gravitational-wave Astronomy & Tests of General Relativity

Modern astronomical data sets provide the opportunity to test our physical theories of the Universe at unprecedented levels of accuracy. This dissertation examines approaches to testing gravitational theories using a) observations of stars orbiting the center of the Milky Way; b) observations of the pulsations of Cepheid variable stars in dwarf galaxies; and c) gravitational-wave observations of compact binary mergers.

Allison Doerr, Senior Editor for Nature Methods.

Getting Published in High-Impact Journals: A Perspective from a Nature Methods Editor

A major goal of most scientific researchers is obtaining exciting results and publishing them in high-visibility, well-regarded journals. As a Senior Editor at Nature Methods with 13 years of experience, I will take you inside the editorial world to describe how we select, review, improve, and disseminate important research to a broad scientific community.

Debnandini Mukherjee, PhD Candidate, UWM Department of Physics.

Listening to hte Universe with Gravitational Waves!

Gravitational waves were observed for the first time on September 14, 2015. A 36 and a 29 M_⊙ black holes were seen to inspiral around each other and merge about ∼ 410 Mpc away. This gave momentum to the areas of gravitational wave astrophysics and astronomy. While the universe could be perceived in the electromagnetic spectrum so far, enabling us to ”see” it with telescopes, it could now be ”listened to” using gravitational waves.