SWOCC release – Coos Bay, OR – Southwestern Oregon Community College is excited to present a lecture by Dr. Xavier Siemens, North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves Physics Frontier Center Co-Director and Professor of Physics at Oregon State University who will discuss Observational Evidence for a Gravitational Wave Background, on Friday, January 26, 2024, at 6:30 pm. This is a free event; all ages are welcome. Coos County residents can join us in-person in the Umpqua Hall lecture room 184 on the Coos Campus, 1988 Newmark Ave., Coos Bay. Curry County residents can join us for a watch party in the Community Room on the Curry Campus, 96082 Lone Ranch Parkway, Brookings. Dr. Xavier Siemens recently reported multiple lines of evidence in favor of a stochastic background of gravitational waves in the NANOGrav 15-yr dataset. This result is consistent with findings from other collaborations around the world. In this talk he will discuss the dataset, analyses, and interpretation of the findings, as well as future work. The latter includes a detailed spectral characterization of the signal we have found to better understand its origin, and searches for individual signals that will enable multi-messenger observations of the largest black holes in the universe. Dr. Xavier Siemens is a Professor of Physics at Oregon State University bringing his gravitational wave research to Oregon from his previous experience at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He received a National Science Foundation Career award in 2010 to continue his team’s work in gravitational wave astronomy. He has been a contributing author to more than 250 papers and has recently focus on multi-messenger astronomy to address many of the overarching big problems in the field. For those unable to attend in-person, the talk will be streamed live through Southwestern’s YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLyo3uIvZEJLAv9maSe_aO8naW3ypdjEO For more information about the lecture series contact Dr. Aaron Coyner, Associate Professor of Physics, at 541-888-7244, aaron.coyner@socc.edu.
