Time: 7-9 p.m., Wednesday, October 17th

Location: Armenise Amphitheater at Harvard Medical School, 200 Longwood Avenue, Boston (link to directions)

Speakers: Nicholas Deporzio, Nicolo Foppiani, and Zoe Zhu

Gazing at the sky on a clear night, you might see the bright band of stars – that is the Milky Way, the galaxy we live in. Have you ever wondered about what the center of a galaxy really looks like? Imagine one day we could travel through space, have a tour of our galaxy and beyond: what would we see? With the excitement of the first observations of gravitational waves and cosmic ray sources still fresh, Nicolo, Zoe, and Nick take you on a journey through the universe to explore the origins of these signals: black holes, neutron stars, and quasars. Together, we will learn how the densest astronomical objects cause time and space to ripple, how black holes excite particles to the highest energies ever observed, and how neutron stars create the heavy elements we find on the earth.