Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory
 

Upcoming Events

Monday, December 04, 2023
01:00 PM - 02:15 PM
SED Town Hall
Agenda coming soon
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Tuesday, December 05, 2023
03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
SED Winter Open House
Join us for a Jingle & Mingle celebration!
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Tuesday, December 05, 2023
03:45 PM - 05:00 PM
ASD Colloquium (Hybrid)
Worlds & Suns in Context: The Role of Age and Environment
Melinda Soares-Furtado (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

In this talk, I discuss the interactions between stellar hosts and planetary companions, including the ejection and ingestion of stellar companions. Drawing insights from stellar evolutionary models and observational survey data (photometric and spectroscopic), I present my team's latest discoveries as we seek to identify unambiguous ingestion-derived chemical tracers. Such tracers make it possible to identify engulfment events long after the original event has transpired and offer a critical opportunity to probe bulk planetary composition. Looking forward, infrared space-based missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon make it possible to investigate young, free-floating planets for the presence of satellites. These data would help to further constrain the formation pathways and dynamical histories of these starless worlds.

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Animation of two neutron stars colliding and the kilonova that followed.

Listen to the gravitational wave detected by LIGO, followed by a ding when the gamma-ray burst was observed by Fermi.