Astronomy Colloquium / Spring 2008

January 30

Prof. Christopher Stubbs

Harvard

Testing Gravity with Telescopes

The discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe demands that we test our understanding of the foundations of gravity on all accessible scales. I will describe 3 examples of how optical wavelength telescopes can be brought to bear on this challenge: 1) testing the self-consistency of the MOND scenario by measuring the 3-d kinematics of galaxies, 2) testing the principle of equivalence with lunar laser ranging, and 3) linking optical variability to sources of gravitational radiation.