Exploring the Enigmatic: Unveiling Black Holes, Dark Matter, and the Cosmos with Professor PriyamVada Natarajan
Blackhole... Most enigmatic... It is a place... It is a puncture in space-time.
Dark matter also is notoriously challenging to detect directly, and its properties and interactions are not fully understood however most of my questions on black holes and dark matter were answered when Professor PriyamVada Natarajan gave an enlightening talk on Mapping and Finding our place in the universe in the Great Ideas Seminar as a part of the Lodha Genius Programme.
My questions on whether there are any consequences of black holes interacting with dark matter, such as the modification of gravitational wave signals and how the presence of angular momentum in the accretion disk determines the size and shape of the innermost stable circular orbit finally found an outlet and were addressed.
She delved into various concepts, providing detailed explanations about our understanding of the cosmos, theories supporting the expansion of the universe, and how matter can distort space. The talk also covered fascinating topics such as gravitational lensing observed during solar eclipses, the identification of cosmic fingerprints through objects exhibiting the same spectrum, the concept of redshift, the behaviour of fasting and feasting black holes, the Hubble Flow, and more.
She also shared with us our current understanding of the cosmos leveraging data from the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra Space Telescope and ground-based facilities including LIGO and computation.
Her life graph is truly inspirational and attending the same school where she graduated from creates a sense of connection. Her life graph taught me that, while it is essential to plan for the future, it is also important to live life as it comes.
Kudos to her for an absolutely engaging session. Couldn't have been better presented! She was able to grip me with her ideas and left us with a great idea to ponder.