Listening for Bumps in the Ocean of Night: Discovering Gravitational Waves

This talk will be shown on our big screen at the Martz-Kohl Observatory and available online via Zoom. You are encouraged to come to the observatory to meet Keith Thorne, as well as the astronomy team at MKO, to join in what could be a lively Q&A after the talk. Facility tours will follow. Dress appropriately for the weather as if you were outside. The classroom is heated but the domes are not.

Imagine the universe as a vast ocean where colliding black holes send “shudders” through the fabric of space-time. To catch these faint whispers, the NSF Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (NSF LIGO) uses massive laser detectors in Washington and Louisiana that can sense movements smaller than an atom. After a decade of refining this “proof of concept,” LIGO made history in 2015 by detecting a collision 1.3 billion light-years away—opening a brand-new way to explore the deepest mysteries of the cosmos.

We are delighted to host Keith Thorne, a research physicist who was at the heart of these historic discoveries. After earning his doctorate at Fermilab, Keith joined the LIGO collaboration in 2003, later leading the real-time controls and computing groups at the Livingston, Louisiana observatory. His work was instrumental in the 2015 detection of gravitational waves, and he continued to lead vital system upgrades until 2024. Now retired in Wellsboro, PA, Keith remains active in the local astronomical community through asteroid occultation observations.

This event offers a rare opportunity to engage with a scientist who was quite literally listening for the ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein. Join us to hear firsthand what it was like to witness a discovery that improved our understanding of the universe.

 

Zoom Meeting

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Time: April 15, 2026 at 7:30 PM, Eastern Time

Topic: Keith Thorne
Meeting ID:  865 7150 5063
Passcode: program

Click the “One Clink Link” shown below. When prompted, click “open zoom.us” in the dialog shown by your browser. If you don’t see a dialog, click the blue “Launch Meeting” in the webpage.

One Click Link: April 2026 Zoom Link

Zoom URL: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86571505063?pwd=b7RO2hANKylYxKstPPVN8rT4zaT8sV.1