Frontiers of Astronomy: Stephen Zepf

Date: Thu. April 11th, 2019, 8:00 pm-9:00 pm
Location: Cleveland Museum of Natural History, 1 Wade Oval Drive, Cleveland, OH 44106

Black Holes and Globular Clusters

Stephen Zepf (Michigan State Univ)

Black Holes have long excited the imagination of both scientists and the broader public. However, black holes are not easy to find because they emit very little light of their own. Often the best way to find a black hole is through its gravitational effect on a very nearby star. Seemingly excellent places to look for these interactions between stars and black holes are globular clusters with many stars all located very close together. I will talk about this search for black holes in globular clusters, and what has been found, and what is says about both black holes and globular clusters. I will also specifically talk about the idea that mergers of two black holes recently discovered by through gravitational waves originate in distant globular clusters across the universe.