Joint IAS Princeton University Astrophysics Colloquium

Advanced LIGO discovered cosmic gravitational waves and surprised us with giant binary black-hole systems, just in time for the 100th anniversary of Einstein's prediction. Gravitational waves became the latest window on the Universe from violent...

Exo-planets are common, and they span a large range of compositions.The origins of this compositional diversity are largely unconstrained. Among planets that are Earth-like, a second question is how often such planets form hospitable to life. A...

I will summarize the history of IGM temperature measurements from the Lyman-alpha forest as well as the theory for the IGM temperature after reionization. I will show that the simplest theory for thermal evolution, which has little parametric...

Measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation have taught us a great deal about the origins and content of the universe, but there is still more information to be extracted, teaching us about the energetic moments in the early universe...

General Relativity is one of two foundational pillars of physics, yet gravity is the most weakly tested of the fundamental forces. Using the pristine solar system as a laboratory, we bump into this pillar to see if it might fall. This talk will...

ABSTRACT ADDED - Many high-energy astrophysical sources — pulsars, PWN, magnetars, GRBs, and AGN (including blazar) jets — produce bright bursts of gamma-ray emission, often featuring rapid variability and nonthermal spectra. This calls for a...

The heaviest elements in the periodic table are synthesized through the r-process, but the astrophysical site for r-process nucleosynthesis is still unknown. The major current candidates are ordinary core-collapse supernovae and neutron star merger...

NO TALK TODAY.