LIGO

I spent most of yesterday at the LIGO facility in Livingston, Louisiana.

Why did I go? Well, general relativity predicts that many dense and energetic gravitational interactions, like collapsing neutron stars, colliding galaxies, should give off waves, which are the gravitational analog of light in the electromagnetic spectrum. Nobody has ever directly detected gravitational waves, but they are likely to see something in the next few years. There are only two observatories in the US and 3 or 4 in the whole world. A laser shines from origin through a lens that splits it at exactly a 90 degree (pi/2...radians shout out!). The two equivalent beams run down 4km long vacuum tubes. The idea is that a mirror will reflect the beams back and the waves should be perfectly in sync. However, gravitational waves will distort the fabric of space time while traveling past earth making one tube longer, the other shorter, and the waves slightly out of sync.

Trip highlights:

I met someone who is probably going to win a Nobel prize.

There was a bubble screen ala Discovery Center in the kids educational center where we had two people blowing bubbles at the same time in opposing directions. It looked like that spooky Donnie Darko time travel shit.

Beignets (a tasty treat) on the way back.

I've been listening to Cut Chemist-The Audience's Listening lately. That shit is rad.