Ryan Ridden • Jan 16, 2017 •
Andrew and I in front of the incredible Colosseum. It’s been a while since my last blog post, but in my absence I haven’t been wasting time. Last year after completing a First Class Honours Degree in Mathematical Physics at the University of Canterbury, I took some time off to travel, before starting my next academic adventure. For a … Read More
Marcus Wilson • Feb 12, 2016 •
The big breaking physics news is the detection of gravitational waves. These waves are distortions in space-time, caused by a large mass doing something spectacular (two colliding black holes in this case) that propagate across the universe and create tiny changes in space when they reach us. The commentary here describes what goes on. Essentially, things change … Read More
Guest Work • Feb 12, 2016 •
Vivian Siegel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Rumors were flying through the blogosphere this winter: physicists at the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) may finally have directly detected gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Einstein 100 years ago in his general theory of relativity. Gravitational waves were predicted to be produced by … Read More
Guest Work • Feb 12, 2016 •
Chad Hanna, Pennsylvania State University The best thing about a day in my life on the lookout for gravitational waves is that I never know when it will begin. Like many of my colleagues working for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), the morning of Monday, September 14, 2015 caught me completely off-guard. For years, we’ve been … Read More