A senior lecturer at Wagga’s Charles Sturt University is part of a team that has been rewarded for a significant physics breakthrough.
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The entire team of more than 1000 people behind the observation of gravitational waves was given the prize for Fundamental Physics at a lavish ceremony at NASA’s Ames Research Centre.
Dr Philip Charlton said the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detection was the culmination of 30 years of work by a dedicated team of scientists and engineers, involving over 100 institutions worldwide.
“It is wonderful that the entire team have been recognised in the award,” Dr Charlton said
The two detectors of LIGO are back doing observations after a series of upgrades.
Dr Charlton said the discovery opened a new window on the universe.
“In the same way that radio astronomy led to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background, the ability to 'see' in the gravitational wave spectrum will likely lead to unexpected discoveries,” he said.
Dr Charlton said if you imagine space as being like a very stiff material and very resistant to being bent. It would take a lot of mass to bend it.
“But when you have a couple of large masses like two black holes spinning around each other, they can cause space to bend like a wave.”
He said a wave travelled through spacetime, from the two black holes merging, and travels like a ripple eventually getting to Earth, which causes a jiggle in the tool used specifically to find this phenomenon.
