by Prof. Harald Pfeiffer of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, 1:30 pm PAB 22.

Gravitational waves are expected to be detected later this decade by the Advanced LIGO experiment. Today’s talk should give us a look ahead. Harald tells me there are already searches on to detect signatures of a population of low mass (less than the mass of the Sun) black holes in the halo of the Milky Way. How such things could possibly have formed is another issue! There is also apparently an uncertainty of a factor of 50(!) in the expected rate of GW signals measurable by Advanced LIGO.