A hundred years ago Albert Einstein postulated the Theory of General Relativity, from which the physicist suggested the idea of gravitational waves. Einstein’s old dream was confirmed in 2016 by more than a thousand scientists from fifteen different countries participating in the Advanced LIGO Program, and among them, the Spanish scientist Alicia Sintes (Mahón, September 30th , 1969), the group leader on Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of the Balearic Islands, she joined the GRG group as associate professor in 2002, and initiated the group's participation in the GEO and LIGO Scientific Collaborations. Since 2002 she has been the PI for the group's participation within the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and a member of the LIGO-LSC council. Furthermore Sintes was member of the G8 group of the “Red de infraestructuras de Astronomía” (2007-2009), member of the “Red de Interlocutores Universitarios” for the EU 7FP, Space & Security group, Servicio Europa I+D -CRUE in 2006. Sintes has extensive experience in developing code for the LIGO Algorithms library software infrastructure, developing and running actual searches, and has pioneered parameter estimation studies for the space mission LISA. Alicia Sintes and her team are leading quick look searches for unknown isolated pulsars and spinning neutron stars in the data from Advanced LIGO detectors.

The detection of these gravitational waves will allow us to expand our knowledge of some of the most rare and violent phenomena of the cosmos, such as black hole collisions, supernova explosions, gamma rays or the Big Bang itself. We will be able to know what happened when the universe was created.

Do not miss this opportunity to hear the main scholar on the Relativity and Gravitational Group from the Universitat de les Illes Balears, and the only Spanish member of the Advanced LIGO Program.

Alicia Sintes will be accompanied by Thomas Hertog (Leuven, May 27 1975). He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Leuven, Belgium, and his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He joined the University of California as a research fellow in 2002 and became a fellow at CERN, Geneva, in 2005. He returned to Belgium in 2011 where he is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Leuven.

Hertog is an internationally renowned cosmologist and a close collaborator of Stephen Hawking. He leads a research team that investigates how string theory applies to the real universe, hereby elucidating the physical nature of the big bang. He has lectured at both a general and a technical level in more than 25 countries, and his research has featured in distinguished media channels on numerous occasions. He lives with his wife and their four children in Bousval, Belgium.

The talk will be in English.

With the collaboration of CEBE/SSBE (Científicos Españoles en BÉlgica/Spanish Scientists in BElgium)