Black Holes and Gravitational Radiation

• Theory: ripples in spacetime
• Gravitational waves animated here and here
• Indirect evidence: Hulse & Taylor's award-winning binary pulsar
• Direct detection: gravity-wave observatories
  • Advanced LIGO: detectors in Hanford and Livingston
  • VIRGO: detector near Pisa, Italy
  • the future: LIGO India, KAGRA, Japan, LISA
• Welcome to the era of gravity wave astronomy!
  • merging black holes scientific summary paper: Abbott et al 2016
  • merging neutron stars
  • astrophysics: sky localization, observed stellar graveyard masses
  • Nobel Prize 2017: Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish, Kip Thorne
• LIGO/Virgo catalog from Nov 2021, masses plotted here and here, orbits visualized

Relativistic Cosmology

Mapping the Universe: Cosmography

• Cosmography: large-scale matter distribution
• actual data: 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey
  • survey geometry
  • clustering: all galaxies
• actual data: Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  • 2-D slices: all galaxies
  • 2-D slices: luminous red galaxies
  • 2-D slices: quasars
  • video: flythrough
• cosmological principle

Cosmic Kinematics: Galaxy Motions

• a collection of spectra
• Edwin Hubble's discovery paper (Hubble 1929)
• modern Hubble diagram from Hubble Telescope Key Project
• Hubble visualized