Gravity Isn't a Force
What this talk is about
The Hang Theory. A lecture series by Hang Dallas.
One speaker. One big idea. One good room.
Where · Times Ten Cellars.
Newton described gravity as a force pulling objects toward each other. Einstein replaced that picture entirely: mass and energy bend spacetime, and what we experience as gravity is objects following the straightest possible paths through that curved geometry. Dr. Michael Kesden walks through how Einstein arrived at this reframing, what it means for falling objects, orbits, and the passage of time, and why black holes are the logical endpoint, regions where curvature becomes so extreme that not even light escapes. He connects the century-old theory to what physicists observe today, including the gravitational waves produced when black holes collide, which is the subject of his own research.
How the night goes
Doors at 6:30 PM. Claim a seat, settle in.
We kick things off around 6:55 PM.
Dr. Kesden takes the floor at 7:00 PM.
Questions from the room near 7:45 PM.
Then we linger. Meet the speaker, meet each other, around 8:00 PM.
Out by 8:30 PM.
Who's speaking
Michael Kesden
Michael Kesden is a Professor and Undergraduate Program Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). He received a BA from Princeton and PhD from Caltech, then arrived at UTD in 2013 after postdoctoral fellowships at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Caltech, and New York University. Dr. Kesden is an active member of the American Physical Society (APS), American Astronomical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Association of University Professors. As a former Speaker of the UTD Academic Senate, Former committee chair of the UT System Faculty Advisory Council, and member of the APS Governance Committee, Dr. Kesden is a strong advocate for shared governance by faculty and administrators in academic institutions. Although his early research addressed cosmological phenomena like the gravitational lensing of the cosmic microwave background and the dynamics of dark matter, his recent research focuses on astrophysical black holes. He is interested in how black-hole spin affects stellar tidal disruption by supermassive black holes and the gravitational waves (GWs) emitted by binary black holes (BBHs) as they inspiral towards merger. GWs observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and other GW detectors encode information about black-hole spin that may reveal the astrophysical formation of these systems. Dr. Kesden’s research was recognized by the 2013 Early Career Lecture of the APS Topical Group in Gravitation and a 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Physics. Dr. Kesden is also deeply interested in how technology can promote research and education. He helped create PRECESSION, a publicly available Python module to evolve precessing BBH spins. In collaboration with the program in Arts and Technology (ATEC) at UTD, he is developing Virtual Interaction with Gravitational waves to Observe Relativity (VIGOR), an interactive virtual-reality simulation of BBHs and the GWs they emit for use in education and outreach. He is also partnered with ATEC and local high schools to develop the Scaffolded Training Environment for Physics Programming (STEPP), a series of educational modules to simultaneously teach physics and computational skills at the high school level by guiding students to program their own simulations using the popular video game engine Unity.
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Times Ten Cellars · Dallas, TX