The Purdue University North Central Astronomy Club will host a presentation about "the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and other experiments in the coming decade by Carl Rodriguez, a Northwestern University Ph.D. student, on Tuesday, Nov. 22 at noon in the Library-Student-Faculty Assembly Hall, Room 02. The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.
The Astronomy Club encourages persons of all interests who have a curiosity about Astronomy and the solar system to attend and learn more. Non-scientists are welcomed.
When completed in 2014, LIGO will be the first detector sensitive enough to regularly see the collisions of neutron stars and black holes in the local universe. When two massive objects such as neutron stars or black holes collide, they release huge amounts of energy, creating ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. The ripples carry detailed information about the objects that created them, offering an exciting new look into the gravitational nature of the cosmos. To that end, an international effort is underway to detect gravitational waves.
This talk will give an overview of the past, present and future of gravitational wave physics and detail the potential of LIGO and other scientific work being developed. Area teachers are welcome to bring their students for this informative, thought-provoking talk. There will be time for discussion and questions and answers.
The Astronomy Club holds talks on current events of what is happening in the Astronomy field throughout the academic year and has hosted a variety of informational presentations, as well as night-sky observation nights, using a high power telescope to view the night sky. All events are open to the public.