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SUMMARY:Eddington lecture 2024: The Dawn of Galaxy-scale Gravitational Wav
 e Astronomy - Dr Stephen Taylor\, Vanderbilt University\, Nashville\, Tenn
 essee\, USA
DTSTART:20240307T160000Z
DTEND:20240307T170000Z
UID:TALK212764@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:107123
DESCRIPTION:For more than 15 years\, NANOGrav and other pulsar-timing arra
 y collaborations have been carefully monitoring networks of pulsars across
  the Milky Way. The goal was to find a tell-tale correlation signature ami
 d the data from all those pulsars that would signal the presence of an all
 -sky background of nanohertz-frequency gravitational waves\, washing throu
 gh the Galaxy. At the end of June 2023\, the global pulsar-timing array co
 mmunity finally announced its evidence for this gravitational-wave backgro
 und\, along with a series of studies that interpreted this signal as eithe
 r originating from a population of supermassive black-hole binary systems\
 , or as relics from cosmological processes in the very early Universe. I w
 ill describe the journey up to this point (including the integral role tha
 t the IoA played)\, what led to the ultimate breakthrough\, how this affec
 ts our knowledge of supermassive black holes and the early Universe\, and 
 what lies next for gravitational-wave astronomy at light-year wavelengths.
LOCATION:Hoyle Lecture Theatre\, Institute of Astronomy
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