Science from as far back as the Nixon era is now reaching a conclusion.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Livingston and its sister facility in Hanford, Washington, will begin using advanced equipment to detect gravitational waves in the distant corners of the universe after countless hours of research compiled by more than 900 scientists.
LIGO Generations, a film directed by Kai Staats, shows the journey of an idea from the mind of MIT emeritus professor Rainer Weiss in 1972 to its culmination in Livingston, Louisiana.
The 4-kilometer long, L-Shaped observatory will soon detect the smallest gravitational changes in galaxies far away from our own.
“The goal of the whole project, and actually the whole LIGO collaboration, is to detect gravitational waves and begin doing a new kind of astronomy,” said professor of physics and astronomy and spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration Gabriela González. “These things we want to detect are coming from neutron stars and black holes colliding and forming new black holes out there, so we think it is very exciting.”
Starring former and current University professors and students, the 25-minute documentary will play March 25, at 7 p.m. at the Louisiana Art and Science Museum and March 26, at 5 p.m. in Nicholson Hall room 130.
Physics and astronomy professor and head of LIGO Livingston Joseph Giaime began working with LIGO in 1986 as a graduate student at MIT under Weiss, making him a second-generation LIGO scientist.
“The way scientists are trained by and large is in graduate school through a Ph.D. program,” Giaime said. “You establish a really close and lasting relationship with your Ph.D. adviser. It’s kind of like a generation.”
In 1995, LIGO broke ground in Louisiana. Since then, LIGO has collaborated with overseas partners. There are similar detectors in Italy and Germany and under construction in Japan and India.
By the ’90s, the University and state were well-versed in gravitational wave detector development, Giaime said, thanks to work by professor William Hamilton in the 1970s and ’80s.
Hamilton’s contribution to wave detection, a cryogenic bar turned off since the introduction of the LIGO unit, is still housed in Nicholson Hall.
“I think that LSU, since we’ve been at it since 1970, has shown support for this field for a long, long time, and it’s really comforting,” Giaime said. “If people don’t think of Louisiana as a place where interesting science happens, they are badly informed.”
González also worked under Weiss at MIT.
“When a discovery is made, [González] is the one that announces it and is in the spotlight,” Giaime said. “So the fact that she is entrusted in that role, of course a leadership role in the collaboration by all these scientists around the world, is a really big deal for her and for LSU.”
Giaime said many professors at the University contributed to LIGO research, and students of Giaime and González have since worked on the LIGO projects in Livingston and Hanford.
The National Science Foundation funds LIGO, the LIGO Science Education Center and LIGO Generations. NSF grants are awarded to about a dozen large facilities across the country.
“This is a very worthwhile project, and worthwhile projects sometimes take a long time,” Giaime said. “They might take more than one generation, and now we’re on the cusp of the thing of achieving a sensitivity where we’ll actually make the discovery that we’ve all been hoping for for a long time.”
The movie showing this week is one of two by Staats detailing the LIGO projects and will be followed by discussion by Giaime, González and three other scientists close to the project.
Both movies can be streamed online for free.