2022 Peterson Public Lecture
Dr. Clifford Will - University of Florida
Black Holes, Waves of Gravity, and other Warped Ideas of Dr. Einstein
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
4:30 p.m.
In Person: Cardwell 103
Virtual: Mediasite Live Stream (Above) or Zoom
Email office@phys.ksu.edu for the Zoom address
Einstein's theories of relativity have had a major impact on everything from popular culture to everyday life to basic science. Songs, plays and movies proclaim Einstein as the symbol of genius, while users of GPS unknowingly take account of Einstein's relativistic warpage of time. Two of the crazier ideas that come from Einstein's theories are Gravitational Waves and the Black Hole. Today, international teams of scientists are on a quest to verify these ideas. Using large-scale detectors on the ground they have detected Einstein's gravity waves and are using them to reveal the hidden secrets of black holes. Astronomers are tracking stars revolving around the massive black hole at our own Galactic Center and are producing images of the shadows of black holes. We are on the verge of crossing a new frontier: testing Einstein’s ideas using the universe as a whole.
Bio
Clifford Martin Will is Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Florida, and Chercheur Associé at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris. Born in Hamilton, Canada in 1946, he obtained a Ph.D. in Physics under Kip Thorne from the California Institute of Technology in 1971 and was an Enrico Fermi Postdoctoral Fellow with S. Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago. After 38 years on the faculties of Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis, in 2012, he moved to the University of Florida.He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, he received the Albert Einstein Medal from the Albert Einstein Society in Switzerland, and in 2021 received the Einstein Prize of the American Physical Society
He has published over 220 scientific articles and four books. His 1986 popular book "Was Einstein Right?" was selected one of the 200 best books for 1986 by the New York Times Book Review, and has undergone translation into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, Greek, Persian, and Chinese. His latest book, "Is Einstein Still Right?", with Nicolás Yunes, has been translated into Chinese and recorded as an audiobook.