Boyd Lecture Series
- Title
- Last Tango in Space: Detecting Gravitational Waves from Binary Black Hole Mergers for the First Time Ever Using LIGO
- Guest Speaker
- Prof. David Reitze
- Guest Affiliation
- California Institute of Technology
- When
- Thursday, January 12, 2017 3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
- Location
- Physics Auditorium (202)
- Details
- The first direct detections of gravitational waves in late 2015 were made possible by a forty year experimental campaign to design, build, andoperate LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. In this talk, I will cover gravitational waves and what makes them so difficult to detect and at the same time such powerful and unique probes of the universe. Most of the presentation will focus on the interferometers, the LIGO detections and their astrophysical implications. Time permitting, I will give a preview of where LIGO intends to go in the next decade and beyond.