Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space

Venue: Copland Theatre, The Spot

Presenters: Dr Janna Levin

The Carlton Connect Initiative and Faculty of Science present a combined DICE – Dialogues on Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship and Dean’s Lecture on the biggest news in physics since the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Scientists have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, which were first proposed by Albert Einstein almost exactly 100 years ago. Using the most sensitive measuring device ever created, the scientists recorded the ‘chirp’ of gravitational waves that were produced when two black holes smashed into each other 1.3 billion years ago.

Astrophysicist and writer Janna Levin spent two years interrogating the key players about their quest to find these elusive waves. The result is a brand new book, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space.

Dr Levin will talk about this discovery and its implications for our understanding of the Universe at a joint Carlton Connect DICE and Faculty of Science Dean’s Lecture, in partnership with Auckland Writer’s Festival.

Dr Levin is a Professor of Physics at Barnard College of Columbia University, New York. She is the author of non-fiction book How the Universe Got Its Spots: diary of a finite time in a finite space and award winning novel A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.

Event image: R Hurt/Caltech-JPL/NASA

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/6703-black-hole-blues-and-other-songs-from-outer-space