Dr Jeffrey Scargle
NASA Ames Research Center, retired.

Image credit: (c) National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Casual observation of the night sky leads one to view the Universe as well-ordered and stable, changing only in minor ways and regularly, smoothly and predictably at that. Even intensive study with telescopes — starting with Galileo, and including William Herschel, Edwin Hubble and many others — only reinforced this vision of a Clockwork Universe. Space-based missions (including the Herschel and Hubble Observatories, named after the mentioned pioneers) opening up new wavelengths, as well as advances in technology enabling better ways of discovery, have led to a quite opposite view: the Dynamic Universe. This talk is essentially a guided tour of some remarkable events in this ever-changing, highly active universe. We start nearby with the Earth and our Sun, transit the Solar System, pass by exploding stars, active galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, ending with perhaps the most dramatic events of all: merging black holes, accessible through a completely new mode of observation in the form of gravitational radiation, “ripples in space-time.”

Jeff Scargle graduated from Pomona College and gained a PhD from the California Institute of Technology. Subsequently he was at the
University of California at Santa Cruz, Lick Observatory and then became a research astrophysicist in the Astrobiology and Space Science Division, NASA Ames Research Center.

This talk is being given remotely from California and can be attended either remotely on Zoom or at the BRLSI where it will projected. 

The video recording of this lecture is now freely available on the Virtual BRLSI YouTube channel. Please go the following link to view it.

https://youtu.be/_9eJUX48Jlg.