TSI Seminar Series
Froney Crawford
(Franklin & Marshall College)
Sep 16, 2025 3:30 PM
This event is actually a recurrance of another event in our database. You can view information about the parent event by clicking on the link below.
Location: Bell Room (Rutherford 103)
TSI Seminar
Imagine using the Milky Way itself as a giant detector for ripples in spacetime. That’s the goal of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), a consortium of over a hundred researchers searching for low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs), such as those produced by supermassive black holes in distant galaxies. NANOGrav regularly observes an array of ultra-precise, clock-like radio pulsars with some of the largest radio telescopes on Earth. Over years of careful timing, tiny variations in the arrival times of their pulses can reveal the faint signatures of passing gravitational waves. In this talk, I’ll introduce the NANOGrav project and GWs, explain how pulsars can act as Galactic-scale detectors, and share NANOGrav’s latest progress toward detecting these elusive waves. I will also highlight the NANOGrav STARS (Student Teams of Astrophysics ResearcherS) research and education program, where undergraduates from across NANOGrav institutions work together in small teams with real data, gaining practical hands-on research experience while building teamwork, leadership, and communication skills.
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