LIGO Staff Panel "Behind the Detections"

10th Anniversary of the First Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves:

Join us in celebrating 10 years of detections at LIGO on Saturday September 13th 2025.

The Staff Panel will take place 9/13/2025 from 1:15pm-2:15pm

LIGO will have 3 seperate events on site on September 13th, each requiring their own seperate tickets.

**Staff Panel Tickets DO NOT include access to the Public Lecture, or any of the September Second Saturday Tours .

For tickets to either of those events, please get a separate ticket via our Website:

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/WA/page/lho-tours-and-events

Event Information:

Go behind the scenes with a special panel of LIGO researchers, scientists, engineers, and operators. We will be discussing more than just the first detection, hear the panel talk about their jobs and experiences inside the ever evolving science and technology of gravitational wave detectors.

The First Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves: GW150914:

While the world learned of the detection from the press release on February 11th 2016, almost every member of the LIGO scientific collaboration (LSC) knew about it the day it happened: September 14, 2015.

There is little doubt that September 14, 2015 will go down in scientific history. It was the day that one of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity morphed from theory into reality. It was the day on which an entirely new field of scientific inquiry, gravitational wave astronomy, was born. And it was the day that human beings acquired a new sense, a completely new way of observing and learning about the universe unlike anything that has existed before.

Many “firsts” occurred on that day: the first detection of gravitational waves, the first direct observation of black holes, the first confirmation that binary black holes exist in the universe, etc. The detection even occurred during the first week of the first observing run of the new “advanced” LIGO detectors. Detecting gravitational waves that early in LIGO’s operation was hoped for but never guaranteed. Moreover, detecting a signal as 'loud' and obvious as the first one was, was nothing short of shocking.

For more information, please visit our webpage https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/

An article specifically about the first detection event GW150914 can be found here:

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-gw150914

Additional things to note:

• Visitors do not require any special badging to visit LIGO.
• Entry begins 15 minutes before your scheduled tour time.
• No flash Photography during the lecture, we kindly request that you do not record/video staff members without their permission.
• LIGO’s facilities are wheelchair accessible, though you will encounter two slopes during the site tour itself.

For additional information, please check our website.