What fills the space between stars in our universe? Pure nothingness?

After sparking interest with our curious audience at Standon Calling, Tessa Baker is now coming to Exeter. She will discuss how space, in fact, isn’t empty and still, but can twist and stretch like a piece of elastic. And when it does, it produces special ‘sounds’ called gravitational waves, which we can hear with some incredible instruments.

Dr. Tessa Baker  is a cosmologist and gravitational wave astronomer at Queen Mary University of London. She will take us on a journey through outer space, black holes, and the most violent events in the universe, to explain one of the most exciting scientific discoveries of the century, and what it means for our understanding of the cosmos.

Dr Tessa Baker is a cosmologist and gravitational wave astronomer at Queen Mary University of London. She hadn’t planned to be a cosmologist; but one day on the train to school she started reading a book about black holes, and thought they were just too cool to leave alone.

Tessa works on understanding the role of gravity in our universe. She develops tools to test ideas about modified gravity and dark energy models with gravitational waves, large-scale structure and cosmological voids. When she’s not running a research team, she likes hiking around the countryside, live music, and salsa.