Gravitational Waves Recorded for First Time

Today a big announcement was made by the LIGO group: for the first time ever, gravitational waves were detected. These were produced by the violent merger of two spinning black holes some 1.5 billion years ago. All of our astronomical observations since the dawn of history have been via either electromagnetic waves (by eye or binoculars, telescopes, radio telescopes, microwave telescopes, x-ray telescopes, etc) or particle spectroscopy (cosmic rays and neutrinos). LIGO pronounces the dawn of a new era in observational astronomy by giving us a third technology with which to study the universe around us.
 
And junior physics major Rebecca Li played a part in this awesome verification of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which predicted the existence of these waves 100 years ago. She did an REU internship at the LIGO site in Hannaford, Washington, this past summer. Rebecca built and refined a sophisticated model of the interferometer which aided in both the control systems aspect of operation and also noise analysis of signals. It was on September 14th, only weeks after her internship, that the gravitational wave signals were detected.

Each year, several of our students participate in NSF-sponsored REU internships at research labs across the country. Others do summer internships at high-tech companies large and small or at research universities around the world.
 
For more information about our program, contact us at [email protected]
 

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