108 - Chiara Mingarelli: Supermassive Black Holes & the Gravitational Wave Background

Chiara Mingarelli is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist and a professor in the Department of Physics at Yale University. She studies supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and their mergers using data about gravitational waves that are detected by pulsar timing array experiments. In this episode, Robinson and Chiara discuss PTAs, gravitational waves, black holes, how and why they merge, and the fresh release of NANOgrav’s fifteen-year data set, which gives the first ever evidence of a gravitational wave background in the universe, an unprecedented discovery that marks the dawn of a new era of astrophysical research.

Chiara’s Website: https://www.chiaramingarelli.com/

Chiara’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_CMingarelli

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode...

00:30 Introduction

02:58 Chiara’s Interest in Black Holes

10:25 What Are Gravitational Waves

15:47 Detecting Gravitational Waves

31:39 How to Visualize Black Holes

40:55 Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

48:51 Two Different Backgrounds

53:46 Collecting and Interpreting Data

56:36 Why Do Black Holes Anchor Galaxies?

58:34 Why Do Black Holes Form Binaries?

01:04:25 Lingering Questions

01:11:33 Cosmic Strings

01:17:35 NANOgrav’s Data Release and the Gravitational Wave Background

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.