Past Colloquia
Resurrecting life’s past in search of life in the universe
Zoom
Betül Kaçar, Prof., UW-Madison Bacteriology; Director, NASA Astrobiology Center MUSE
November 03, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Studying ancient Earth is not new in astrobiology, but elucidating general principles – selection rules – has not been a focus. This needs to change in the coming decade as astronomers and astrobiologists are broadening their search strategy beyond an exclusive framework of “life as…
Tracing the build-up of massive galaxies from their smallest components: The view from the Virgo cluster
Zoom
Eric Peng, Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics
October 27, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The build-up of galaxies is thought to be a continual process of merging and accretion of smaller components. This history is difficult to disentangle, but studying low-mass stellar systems such as dwarf galaxies and star clusters gives us a window onto the entire history of galaxy…
Colloquium with Kathryn Neugent and Ziggy Pleunis
Zoom
Dr. Kathryn Neugent and Dr. Ziggy Pleunis
October 20, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The Binary Fraction of Red Supergiants … and Beyond! — by Kathryn Neugent The binary fraction of massive main-sequence OB stars is thought to be as high as 70% or greater. However, until recently, only around a dozen binary red supergiants (RSGs) had been identified,…
Probing the early Milky Way with the Pristine survey
Zoom
Else Starkenburg
October 13, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
The lowest metallicity stars that still exist today represent a window into the early Universe. Studying these stars gives us a local avenue to guide our understanding of star formation and supernova feedback in the early Universe, the early build-up of galaxies like our Milky…
Dwarf Galaxies and Their Black Holes
Zoom
Jenny Greene, Princeton
October 06, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Because they are dark-matter dominated, dwarf galaxies provide some of the most stringent tests of our cold dark matter model. Specifically, Lambda CDM makes predictions about the number, shape, and spatial distributions of the faint friends of massive galaxies. I will present results from the…
Colloquium with Prof. Adam Hincks and Prof. Marten van Kerkwijk
Zoom
Adam Hincks and Marten van Kerkwijk, University of Toronto
September 29, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
A Cosmic Filament Illuminated by the Cosmic Microwave Background – by Prof. Adam Hincks Only a small fraction of baryons today are found in galaxies. In fact, for many years ~30–40% of the baryonic matter predicted to exist by early universe cosmology were unaccounted for…
Colloquium with Renée Hložek and Ting Li
Zoom
Renée Hložek and Ting Li, University of Toronto
September 22, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Can astronomical methods help detect signs of neurodegeneration? – by Prof. Renée Hložek Structures in the brain look like structures in the sky: the natural world contains self-similarity that can be exploited to allow for learning across disciplines. While imaging data in the two fields…
The quest of measuring star-formation histories to elucidate the first galaxies
Zoom
Sandro Tacchella, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology
September 15, 2021
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
The last great unknown of the cosmic history is when, why and how the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang. These galaxies played an important role in re-ionizing the universe and are also an important tracer of early structure formation. I will present new results on…
Studying star formation from the stratosphere
Zoom
Laura Fissel, Queen's University
April 14, 2021
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
An important mystery in astrophysics is why the conversion of interstellar gas into stars is such an inefficient process. We typically observe of order 1% the star formation rate expected from a free-fall gravitational collapse of molecular gas clouds. This low efficiency is likely due to regulation from a combination of turbulent gas motions,…
Expanding the gravitational-wave spectrum
Zoom
Sarah Burke-Spolaor, University of West Virginia
April 07, 2021
2:00pm - 3:00pm
We are seeking both electromagnetic and gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes, the biggest, discrete binary systems in the Universe. When galaxies merge, these giant binaries can form. During their inspiral and coalescence phases, they will produce intense gravitational radiation, which we expect to…