Astronomy lecture: Exploring the Gravitational Wave Universe

Measuring gravitational waves is a revolutionary new way to do astronomy. In 2015, LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) first detected one of these waves - a tiny ripple in space itself, generated by the collision of 2 black holes. Since then, we and our international partners have measured nearly 300 signals. What can we learn from the mergers of black holes or the collision of two neutron stars? How is it possible to measure a wave which stretches our detector 1000 times less than the diameter of a proton? What's coming next in our search for these tell-tale ripples in space? Join us Wednesday night, July 15, 2025, for a talk about LIGO and the emerging astronomy of gravitational wave detection.

Prof. Brian Lantz is a Research Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. He started working on LIGO in 1991 as an undergraduate in Rai Weiss's lab at MIT and continued there for his Ph.D, building high-power interferometers to prototype LIGO. Prof. Lantz is the scientific leader for the Advanced LIGO seismic isolation system, and he is designing new mirror suspensions to upgrade Advanced LIGO because he loves to work on these amazing machines. https://www.sfaa-astronomy.org/event-6023781