A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee were among those contributing to the discovery of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, a project that received the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences gave the award to Rainer Weiss, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Barry Barsih, of California Institute of Technology; and Kip Thorne, also of Cal Tech “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
LIGO is a collaboration with more than 1,000 researchers developed over more than 40 years that led to the observation of gravitation waves for the first time in September 2015. The waves were the result of two black holes colliding more than 1.3 billion years ago and their discovery is expected to open up new discoveries in the future.
The UWM team was led by Patrick Brady, Jolien Creighton, Xacier Siemens and Alan Wiseman, all of whom are former post-doctoral researchers of Thorne.
Their work in UWM’s Leonard E. Parker Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics focused on building the analytical framework and computational tools used in the discovery of gravitational waves. Computers at UWM are part of the LIGO Data Grid, a network of supercomputers used to process massive amounts of data acquired in the search.
The UWM system also serves as an alarm that notifies project team members when instruments in Washington and Louisiana have detected a signal worthy of closer examination.
“The UWM group has been a key part of the project from very early on,” said Clifford Will, a distinguished professor of physics at Florida State University who is known for his contributions to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity. “They were involved both in building the infrastructure and in resolving issues related to using the data. They were responsible for important calculations that were used to make the detection. Some of those formulas were built into the data-analysis protocol for LIGO.”
Brady will be giving a lecture on the discovery of gravitational waves from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Friday in the atrium of the Kenwood Interdisciplinary Research Complex at 3135 N. Maryland Ave.
