Louisiana State University
The Glover Memorial Lecture
Einstein, Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
Monday, January 29. 2018
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.
(360 W. Louther Street, Carlisle, PA)
More than a billion years ago, the merger of two black holes produced gravitational waves that were observed traveling through Earth on September 14, 2015. The talk will explain how Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves more than one hundred years ago, and describe the latest exciting discoveries with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.
The event is sponsored by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues and the Glover Memorial Lecture Fund and co-sponsored by department of physics & astronomy and the Churchill Fund. It is also part of the Clarke Forum’s Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty Series.
Biography (provided by the speaker)
Gabriela González is a physicist working on the discovery of gravitational waves with The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team. She was born in Córdoba, Argentina, studied physics at the University of Córdoba, and pursued her Ph.D. in Syracuse University, obtained in 1995. She worked as a staff scientist in the LIGO group at MIT until 1997, when she joined the faculty at Penn State. In 2001 she joined the faculty at Louisiana State University, where she is a professor of physics and astronomy. She has received awards from the American Physical Society, the American Astronomical Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since it was funded in 1997, served as the elected LSC spokesperson in 2011-2017, and is known for participating in the announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves in 2016. Her work has focused on LIGO instrument development (especially reducing noise sources and tuning alignment systems) and LIGO data calibration and diagnostics, critical to increasing the astrophysical reach of data analysis methods.
The Glover Memorial Lecture
The Glover Memorial Lectures are usually presented in alternate years. This lectureship in science was established in 1958 in memory of John Glover of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, the inventor of the Glover Tower, and in memory of his son and grandson, Henry and Lester Glover, by the late Dr. John D. Yeagley and Mrs. Blanche Yeagley of York, Pennsylvania. Recent Glover Lectures include Peter Brancazio’s “Sports on the Moon,” Clint Sprott on “The New Science of Chaos,” Dr. Dorrit Hoffleit’s presentation on “A Century of Women in Astronomy,” Lawrence Krauss’ lecture on “The Physics of Star Trek,” Albert Bartlett’s lecture on “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy,” David Lee’s lecture on “Superconductivity and Superfluidity: A Century of Discovery”and Rush Holt’s lecture on “Advancing Science.”
Video of the Lecture