Special Public Talk - A Virtual Tour of Einstein's Universe

Join us on June 17th, 2024 at 7pm for a Special Public Talk featuring Prof. Matthew Bailes, the Director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

In this public talk Professor Bailes will explain how stars in the Universe live and die, and leave behind superdense remnants including white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes. Even after death, many of these remnants remain detectable, allowing us to explore whether Einstein's physical laws offer a correct description of the Universe or not? Concepts such as time dilation, length contraction, black holes, and waves of gravity can be explored using highly sophisticated telescopes and these will be illustrated using the latest public education technology developed by the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Date: Thursday, March 14th, 2024

Time: 7pm (doors open at 6:45 pm)

Location: McConnell Engineering Building room 204

Meet our speaker:

Professor Matthew Bailes is the Director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery and is currently touring Canada. Bailes uses both radio telescopes and gravitational wave detectors to explore Einstein's Universe in which superdense stars bend space and time. He currently leads the MeerTime project in South Africa that is monitoring over 1000 radio pulsars to search for subtle effects caused by the passage of neutron stars and black holes, but was also part of the team that discovered Fast Radio Bursts and was awarded the Shaw Prize in 2023. To better illustrate astrophysical concepts Bailes conceived and funded a new tool that enables astronomers to fly around the moons, planets, stars and stellar remnants that are present in our universe and will use it in this talk.