Astronomy on Tap Leiden: The Universe’s Ghosts and Ripples

We are very excited for our next event, which will take place on Monday, October 26th at Culture Café Leidse Lente at 20:00 CET!

Beyond the light our eyes can see, the Universe is constantly sending us other kinds of messages…. and this month we learn how to read them. Jannis Necker will introduce us to neutrinos, the ghostly particles streaming from the most energetic explosions in the cosmos, while Lucas Pouw will take us to the colliding black holes whose ripples in spacetime opened an entirely new era of astronomy.

As always, there will be fun games with which you can test your knowledge and try to win cool science prizes!

• Jannis Necker: “Looking at the Sky with Different Eyes: Neutrino Astronomy and the Recent Nobel Prize”

Jannis is a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden Observatory where he investigates the most energetic explosion in the universe. During his PhD he used observations of very high energetic elementary particles from space called neutrinos to learn about these explosions. He will explain what astrophysical neutrinos are, how we can build a neutrino telescope and why Franzis Halzen received this year’s Nobel Prize of physics for the IceCube neutrino detector.

• Lucas Pouw: “Listening to the Universe with gravitational waves”

Lucas Pouw is a PhD student at Leiden Observatory. He studies black holes that grow through mergers and by feeding on torn-apart stars. In this talk, he will paint a picture of how astronomy entered a new era with the detection of gravitational waves from two merging black holes.

Logistical information: We start at 20:00 sharp, so please arrive earlier to enter the venue, save a seat, and grab a drink at the bar. We will be uploading a recording of the talks on our YouTube channel after the event. Join us for an evening of astronomy and fun games where you can win cool science prizes! All ages and backgrounds are welcome!