Join us on September 12th, as CSA's Gabriel Freedman & Pratyusava Baral present: Space probes Voyager 1 & 2

Hello to all!!! It may be dreary and rainy right now, but what better way to spend your time than to come down the the cozy back room of the Sugar Maple and learn about SPACE EXPLORATION!?! Gather your family, friends, neighbors and coworkers, bundle them down to Bay View and get ready for some science!!!

In 1977, two space probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched from Earth. Each probe carried a small gold record containing a summary of the sights, sounds, languages, and music of home. Today both Voyagers have long left the Solar System and will continue to drift in interstellar space forever. How did we manage to break them free of the Sun's gravity? What have the Voyagers found to this point in their journey? Will anything (or anyone...) find them? And if they are found, how does one go about decoding the record's contents? This talk will answer all these questions and more as we discuss what makes Voyager one of the most scientifically and culturally important space missions of our time.

(image is property of the Coffeeshop Astrophysics group)

Coffeeshop Astrophysics is a public outreach group run by graduate students and postdocs from the Leonard E Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology, and Astrophysics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They give a series of informal lectures on a wide array of topics relating to astrophysics and science as a whole. The talks occur once a month on Saturdays at 1pm at Anodyne Coffee in Walker's Point. If you would like to learn more about the program, look at past talk topics, or see their upcoming schedule, feel free to visit their website

Gabriel Freedman is a fourth year graduate student in the Physics program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research focuses on the detection of low-frequency gravitational waves through his owrk as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration. In particular, he is interested in novel computational methods for making astrophysical analyses tractable, and incorporating machine learning and other modern data science techniques into gravitational wave research. Outside of graduate school, Gabriel enjoys listening to music of all genres, and plays the piano in his spare time.

Pratyusava Baral is a second year graduate student in the Physics program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He studies gravitational waves with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration. His research currently focuses on gravitational wave cosmology, where he studies properties of the Universe using small fluctuations on spacetime. In his spare time, Pratyusava enjoys experimenting with cooking, going on walks, and watching cricket.