Professor Jeff Murugan will present the Department of Mathematics & Applied Mathematics colloquium talk entitled, "Black holes and gravitational waves - or can you hear the shape of a black hole?". 

On the 11th February 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first ever detection of gravitational waves.  The signal was received from the merger of a binary black hole system (incidentally, this was also the first detection of such a black hole system) 1.2 billion light years away.  The detection was widely heralded as the dawn on a new age in humankind's exploration of the universe.  

In this popular level talk, Professor Murugan will give a brief introduction to gravitational waves, their detection and why this was such a big deal.