Visiting Professor Series Whispers from the Cosmos: The Dawn of Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Astronomers around the world were thrilled August 17 to
observe, for the first time, colliding neutron stars in gravitational waves.
These waves are ripples in spacetime that carry information not in the form of
light or particles, but in the form of gravity itself. Shane Larson returns to
the library to explore what we are learning from gravitational waves and why
the latest observations are game-changing. Dr. Larson is a research associate
professor of physics at Northwestern University, where he is the associate
director of CIERA, the university’s astrophysics center. He works in the field
of gravitational wave astrophysics, specializing in studies of compact stars,
binaries, and the galaxy.