Next Monthly Meeting: Sept. 9, 2022
Gravitational Lensing: A View of the Warped Universe
Dave Goldberg, PhD
Professor of Physics, Drexel University
About a century ago, Albert Einstein developed his theory of general relativity. It not only explained already observed phenomena like the anomalous precession of Mercury, but also described a universe in which light would trace paths through the folds and curves of spacetime, resulting in distorted images -- an effect known as "gravitational lensing." In this talk, I'll describe how space and time get bent, how gravitational lensing was first confirmed, and how it has become an important tool in our measurement of the dark universe. I'll delve a little into my own work, and finally, I'll talk about how the exciting new images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can be analyzed with gravitational lensing to provide inside into some of the earliest cosmic structures.
Dave is a cosmologist specializing in gravitational lensing. He has written two popular science books on the interface between cosmology and particle physics in the early universe
The Universe in the Rearview Mirror: How Hidden Symmetries Shape Reality, D Goldberg. Dutton. (2013)
A User's Guide to the Universe: Surviving the Perils of Black Holes, Time Paradoxes, and Quantum Uncertainty, D Goldberg & J Blomquist. Wiley & Sons: Hoboken. (2010)
The meeting will be held in-person at the Radnor Township Building.
Informal gathering at 7:00, program begins at 7:30pm.
The meeting will be live-streamed on the DVAA YouTube Channel:
www.youtube.com/DelawareValleyAmateurAstronomers