- About Us
- People
- Undergrad
- Graduate
- Research
- News & Events
-
News by Year
- 2022
- Physics Professors named Canada Research Chairs
- Physics Faculty and Graduate Student Win Teaching Awards
- SFU Physics Professor wins 2021 Buchalter Cosmology Prize
- Dr. Hayden's Research in SFU Scholarly Impact
- Karen Kavanagh selected as a Fellow of the MRS
- Applied Physics undergrad wins AMPP Poster Competition
- Physics BSc Grad Gives Convocation Address
- 2021
- Simmons wins Women of Distinction Award
- Pogosian's Research in SFU Scholarly Impact
- PhD Graduate Awarded Convocation Medal
- Convocation Speaker Aidan Wright
- Nancy Forde Elected BSC President
- Bechhoefer named Royal Society of Canada Fellow
- Jeff Sonier Named American Physical Society Fellow
- SFU undergrads receive quantum grant award
- 2020
- 2019
- 2018
- 2022
- Events by Year
- Events By Category
-
News by Year
- Outreach
- _how-to
- Congratulations to our Class of 2021
- Archive
TRIUMF, SFU, UBC Lecture
A New Window on the Universe
Michael Landry
The LIGO and Virgo Scientific Collaborations, LIGO Hanford Observatory/Caltech
A New Window on the Universe
Mar 05, 2016
Synopsis
On Sep 14, 2015, LIGO detected a faint rumbling in spacetime from the collision of two black holes, a cataclysmic event occurring more than a billion years ago. The two black holes merged to form a larger one, in the process releasing three times the mass of our sun in gravitational waves, in the shape of space. This energy release occurred in just a few tenths of a second, making this the most powerful astrophysical event ever observed by humans. None of the energy was released by light; black holes are black, and we need gravitational wave detectors to observe them.
In this talk, we will take a journey in time, beginning 1.3 billion years ago, following the passage of gravitational waves through the universe, to Earth, where they were detected by large, L-shaped interferometers called LIGO. This first direct detection of gravitational waves from deep space constitutes the opening of a new window on the universe: no longer will we be deaf to modulations of the medium of space that we live in.