Black Holes: How to Find Something that Hides in the Dark

How do you find something that hides in the dark? Black holes were first theorized in 1916 and astronomers have been on the hunt to find one ever since. Exactly 99 years later we “watched” two black holes merge together via gravitational wave detection. Finally in 2017, 101 years later, we snapped the first image of a supermassive black hole through the equivalent of an “Earth-sized” radio telescope. This talk will explain what a black hole is, what gravitational waves are, how LIGO/VIRGO detect them, and learn how to directly interpret the data yourself. Our speaker will discuss the details of the first image of a black hole, how astronomers got it, and the history of the galaxy it belongs to, M87. Join the discussion and immerse yourself in one of the most spectacular and monumental eras in astronomy, it is just the beginning.