Speaker: Marco Bruni
Location: Education Centre, Royal Bournemouth hospital
In this talk I describe three main subjects of present day astrophysics, starting from the latest Nobel prize in physics and going back to Einstein theory of General Relativity. Supernovae explosions leading to neutron stars and black holes end the life of large stars. The supernovae resulting from the explosion of white dwarfs stars in binary systems are used to precisely measure the expansion of the Universe, which appear to be accelerating. This acceleration is caused by dark energy, an unknown form of matter that can change Einstein gravity into a repulsive, rather than attracting, force. The ultimate mystery of Einstein theory is the existence of gravitational waves, for which we only have indirect proof of existence. I briefly illustrate the current efforts of astronomers and astrophysicists to better understand these phenomena, and conclude with an outlook to the future of the subject.