Physics Comment Magazine March 2018 Issue Physics Comment March 2018_v1.3 | Page 24

The Proceedings of the 61th Annual Conference of the South African Institute of
Physics (SAIP2016)
The Proceedings of SAIP2016, the 61st Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Physics has been published on
24 December 2017 and is available electronically at: http://events.saip.org.za/internalPage.py?pageId=10&confId=86.
The papers are ordered by SAIP Division/Forum and then alphabetically by first author surname. The PDF file of the
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Citation information:
Author names, Title (optional), in The Proceedings of SAIP2016, the 61st Annual Conference of the South African
Institute of Physics, edited by Dr. Steve Peterson and Dr. Sahal Yacoob
(UCT/2016), pp. xxx - yyy. ISBN: 978-0-620-77094-1.
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The Proceedings of SAIP2016: Complete document (44.6 MB PDF with a total of 546 pages), published 24 December
2017.
The Proceedings of SAIP2016: Frontmatter only (13.35MB PDF with a total of 17 pages), published 24 December 2017.
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ARTICLES
Congratulations to LIGO/Virgo Collaborations
Report by Professor Patrick Woudt
The South African Institute of
Physics congratulates the LIGO
and Virgo scientific collaborations
on their detection of gravitational
waves from two merging neutron
stars. After four previous
detections of gravitational waves
from merging black holes, this is
the first direct observation by
LIGO and Virgo of a neutron star
merger. In a truly global effort,
thousands of physicists and
astronomers using a diverse suite
of ground-based and space-based
telescopes across the planet
24 | P a g e
successfully identified a rapidly
evolving counterpart of this event.
This marks the first time that a
merger of two neutron stars has
been observed both through the
gravitational wave emission of the
in-spiraling merger, and the
electromagnetic
radiation
of
material ejected in the merging
process.
The SAIP notes with delight that
South African physicists and
astronomers are actively involved in
this unique discovery. South
African contributions include
observations using the Southern
African Large Telescope (SALT),
telescopes at the South African
Astronomical
Observatory
(SAAO), and
MeerKAT/SKA
South Africa. The publication that
describes the planet-wide effort
surrounding
this
discovery,
numbering approximately 3000
co-authors, includes researchers
from 3 national facilities (SAAO,
SALT and MeerKAT/SKA South
Africa) and 5 South African