Gravitational Wave Sources at the Heart of Galaxies

Smadar Naoz Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy /UCLA

Gravitational-wave emissions are small ripples in the fabric of spacetime that are emitted when two masses accelerate toward each other. The detections of gravitational-wave emission from two colliding black holes by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) transformed the way we sense our Universe and raised many puzzles in understanding how black holes meet. Smadar Naoz will be discussing how do black holes collide at the heart of Galaxies in the context of those recent detections.