[photo credit: Pasadena Public Library]
The timing carries particular significance. As of March 19, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA network has recorded 290 gravitational wave events since the “advanced” era began in 2015. On January 14, LIGO detectors registered a particularly clear signal involving colliding black holes approximately 1.3 billion light-years away with masses between 30 to 40 times that of the Sun.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory is a project of the National Science Foundation operated jointly by Caltech and MIT. The laboratory consists of two identical L-shaped detectors with 2.5-mile-long arms—one in Hanford, Washington, and one in Livingston, Louisiana—that use systems of lasers and mirrors to measure disturbances caused by gravitational waves passing through Earth.
On September 14, 2015, LIGO detectors registered the first confirmed gravitational wave detection from colliding black holes. This historic achievement earned Kip Thorne and Barry Barish of Caltech, and Rainer Weiss of MIT, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.
The program is not the library’s first LIGO offering. The Pasadena Public Library previously hosted a similar program on October 3.
LIGO, The Gravitational Frontier will run on Friday, December 12 at 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Hastings Branch, 3325 East Orange Grove Boulevard, Pasadena, California. For more information, call (626) 744-7262 or visit https://www.cityofpasadena.net/library/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D191322197.
