Events During the Week of November 2nd through November 8th, 2025
Monday, November 3rd, 2025
- Plasma Physics (Physics/ECE/NE 922) Seminar
- Title to be announced
- Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall
- Speaker: Felix Parra-Diaz, PPPL
- Host: Cary Forest
- Theory Seminar (High Energy/Cosmology)
- Title to be announced
- Time: 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 5280
- Speaker: Vincent S.H. Lee, UC, Berkeley
- Abstract: TBA
- Host: Joshua Foster
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025
- No events scheduled
Wednesday, November 5th, 2025
- No events scheduled
Thursday, November 6th, 2025
- Astronomy Colloquium
- Dynamics and Energetic Transients in Galactic Nuclei
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: 4421 Sterling Hall
- Speaker: Dr. Itai Linial, Hubble Fellow at NYU
- Abstract: Centers of galaxies host a variety of dynamical processes, owing to the high density of stars and the presence of a central Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH). Orbital relaxation brings stellar objects into close encounters with the SMBH, driving a plethora of energetic phenomena. These include tidal disruption events, stellar collisions, the formation of X-ray binaries, compact object mergers detectable by LIGO, and gravitational wave (GW) inspirals of stellar objects towards the SMBH. In this talk, I will review some of these processes and their observable signatures, with an emphasis on newly discovered classes of repeating flares associated with SMBHs. I will discuss theoretical models, key open questions, and how these phenomena inform our understanding of accretion physics, SMBH growth and evolution, and the connection to their host galaxies. A powerful array of current and upcoming time-domain surveys and instruments will uncover thousands of high-energy sources in galactic nuclei in the coming years. I will highlight how theoretical interpretation of these discoveries can address fundamental questions in astrophysics, and conclude with broader implications for multi-messenger observations in the era of space-based GW detectors such as LISA.
- Host: Nicholas Stone
Friday, November 7th, 2025
- Physics Department Colloquium
- Title to be announced
- Time: 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Place: Chamberlin 2241
- Speaker: Rick Stevens, University of Chicago
- Host: Uwe Bergmann