Seminars

Accessing outer space as a field for scientific exploration and research : the legal aspects
Jean-François Mayence (Legal Advisor BELSPO (Belgian Federal Office for Science Policy))

Salle A3, Petits Amphithéâtres - Galerie des Arts
Bâtiment B7b, Quartier Agora, Allée du 6 Août, 15, B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)

Outer space is for everyone. That’s a common saying. But what does it actually mean? What are the principles applicable to space activities, space areas and space resources? Are there any legal limits to human expansion in outer space? What is left from the peaceful cooperation mottoes of the 60’s?

At the very time the global space community is shifting to the so called “New Space”, the realm of Elon Musk, national defense agencies and smart start-ups, what is the part that outer space law can still save for scientists? How can lawyers use this new reality, made of cubesat constellations, asteroid mining and orbital advertising, to protect science and even provide research with new opportunities?

What is space law made of, and does it fit current challenges?

Unmodeled minute-long gravitational-wave transients
Maxime Fays (University of Sheffield & LIGO)

Salle de réunion AGO (local -1/14), Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique
Bâtiment B5c, Quartier Agora, Allée du 6 Août, 19C, B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)

Astrophysical phenomena originating around the death of massive stars are predicted to generate minute-long gravitational-wave transients for which robust predictive models are not readily available. As searches looking for such signals must rely on minimal assumptions, they are also sensitive to gravitational waves emitted from unpredicted sources and have strong potential for discovering as yet unobserved physical processes.

After introducing potential sources of minute-long gravitational-wave transients, I will give an overview of the methods used to probe this exciting regime. I will describe the challenges faced during the data analysis and discuss areas of active development that would benefit from new contributions.

A follow-up hands-on workshop is organised for Friday 6th December.

3-hour Workshop: Unmodeled search for minute-long gravitational-wave transients
Maxime Fays (University of Sheffield & LIGO)

Salle de réunion AGO (local -1/14), Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique
Bâtiment B5c, Quartier Agora, Allée du 6 Août, 19C, B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)

This workshop is a hands-on follow-up on the Thursday 5th December seminar targeting students, postdocs, and academics interested in searching for minute-long unmodeled gravitational-wave transients. Please bring in your laptop!

We will first learn to find and retrieve data recorded by current generation observatories, then identify periods associated with suboptimal data quality. We will see how to condition and process the data to extract potential gravitational-wave candidates, which we will rank by developing a suitable statistic.

Finally, we will walk through a minimally sufficient end-to-end process to characterise the method sensitivity.

Understanding galaxy formation processes and Hubble constant from strong gravitational lenses simulations
Sampath Mukherjee (STAR)

Salle de réunion AGO (local -1/14), Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique
Bâtiment B5c, Quartier Agora, Allée du 6 Août, 19C, B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)

The telescopes and detectors show us images are the light emitted from distant sources that have traveled across the Universe to reach us. The trajectories of light rays can get deflected by the inhomogeneous distribution of matter along the line of sight. Sometimes the deflection caused by overdense foreground objects such as galaxies, groups, and clusters can create multiple images of the distant light source. This phenomenon is called strong gravitational lensing. Even though only few hundred of those objects have been discovered till now, they are extremely crucial to understand the nature of dark matter.

I will present a brief overview of strong lensing and how we can simulate them from hydrodynamic simulations. I will explain in details on how to constrain galaxy formation from simulated strong lenses. In the later part of the talk, I will introduce time-delay cosmography and measurement of Hubble constant from it. In this context, I will show the importance of simulated lensed images and the important role that they will play in the future when 1000s of new lenses are discovered.


Coffee, tea and cookies will be served after the seminar...

TBA
Vincent Pelgrims (IA/FORTH & Dept. of Physics, Héraklion)

Salle de réunion AGO (local -1/14), Institut d'Astrophysique et de Géophysique
Bâtiment B5c, Quartier Agora, Allée du 6 Août, 19C, B-4000 Liège 1 (Sart-Tilman)


Coffee, tea and cookies will be served after the seminar...

TBA
Manuela Lippi (NASA/GSFC)

Le lieu où se tiendra cet évènement n'est pas encore déterminé...


Coffee, tea and cookies will be served after the seminar...