RASC Hamilton: Gravitational Waves: What’s the Big Deal?
Speaker: Prof. Cliff Burgess, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University
Gravitational waves were recently seen coming from the coalescence of two black holes a great distance away. This talk intends to convey three things: 1. why modern theories of forces always require the existence of waves; 2. why this requirement is driven by relativity (largely because of its requirement that nothing goes faster than light, which in turn is founded on the impossibility of being able to sends signals into one’s own past); and 3. why seeing gravitational waves from black holes is likely to teach us much about the universe as a whole in addition to learning about the waves and black holes themselves.
Cliff Burgess was born in Manitoba and was raised in various places around Western Canada, Ontario and Europe. He received his B.Sc. in a co-op programme, with a joint honours in Physics and Applied Math from the University of Waterloo. His doctoral work in Theoretical Particle Physics was done at the University of Texas in Austin under the supervision of Steven Weinberg.
After doing a short postdoctoral stint at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in 1987 he joined the faculty at McGill University, where he was made James McGill Professor in 2003. He is presently a professor with McMaster University’s department of Physics and Astronomy and an Associate Faculty Member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He has spent sabbatical years with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as well as the University of Neuchatel and CERN in Switzerland.
Who can attend: Everyone
Fee: Free
Reservations: Not required
Organized by: RASC - Hamilton Centre
Location: Royal Canadian Legion – Branch 551, 79 Hamilton St. N., Waterdown, ON L0R 2H0