Events

This month we'll hear from two guest speakers: Ana Ennis, from the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics, will speak about the death of stars like our Sun, and how these produce the stuff that we are made from! Perimeter Institute researcher Luciano Combi will then share how we can observe and model the deaths of stars, to understand the origin of heavy elements like gold.

Scott Tremaine received his BSc degree from McMaster University and his PhD degree from Princeton. He has been on the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Toronto, Princeton University, and the Institute for Advanced Study. He was the first Director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics from 1985 to 1997 and the Chair of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences of Princeton University from 1998 to 2008.

Scott will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Waterloo on June 14.

Galaxies change and evolve over hundreds of millions of years, and while we can gain clues about their evolution by looking at galaxies, this evolution is too slow to watch in real time. However, by running simulations of galaxies, astronomers can unlock this additional dimension, tracking how galaxies form and evolve through time. At this month's KPL astronomy talk, Cam Lawlor-Forsyth will discuss the combination of observations and simulations as a powerful tool in understanding galaxy evolution.

We are excited to announce a landmark conference that plans to delve into the forefront of research on modified theories of gravity and brings together leading experts from different disciplines, including observational astrophysicists, numerical relativists, cosmologists and mathematical physicists to explore the present status of modified theories of gravity and envision their future theoretical development and implications for observations.

This conference is also timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of pioneering work in this area carried out by Gregory Horndeski in the Waterloo Mathematical Physics Community. Hosted jointly by Perimeter Institute and the University of Waterloo, this conference will serve as a forum for researchers from different disciplines to exchange ideas at the cuttingnedge of gravitational physics.

Astronomy on Tap 8 August 2024.

Sit back, relax, and learn about the Universe, while also having a couple of drinks and a bit of fun. This month we learn about planets with Jake Ferguson and Michael Balogh!

Hunter Martin, Rashaad Reid and Neo Dizdar start off the fall term WCA astroseminars.

Tanveer Karim is an Arts & Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto and obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2023. He is currently a co-lead of the Lyman-Break Galaxies Topical Team in the Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) and has led efforts related to the Emission-Line Galaxies in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Collaboration. 

Luciano Combi is an astrophysicist interested in gravitation, compact objects, high-energy astrophysics, and foundations of science.  He is doing his first postdoc at Perimeter Institute with a joint appointment as a CITA National Fellow (U of Guelph).

Dr. Eve J. Lee is an Assistant Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of Physics at McGill, and a member of the Trottier Space Institute and the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets. She leads a theoretical astrophysics group focusing on the formation of planets and stars.

Cosmology is the study of the Universe as a whole, and asks questions like "How did the Universe begin?" and "What is our Universe made of?". However, answering these questions comes at a cost: huge questions require huge quantities of data, and huge amounts of analysis. At September's WCA-KPL astronomy talk, Dr. Marco Bonici will discuss how a new tool -- Artificial Intelligence -- is helping cosmologists to understand the data collected from telescopes, and answer the fundamental questions about the cosmos.