SUBJECT HEADING HERE SPACE?
STORY BY AUTHOR NAME HERE
PAGE 20 Space technology helping Earthlings to survive
PAGE 18 Model of light
PAGE 22 Messages from time
Laura Nuttall wants us to look into the night sky , put the world ’ s worries to one side , and do what humans have been doing for as long as we have been able – gaze up and wonder .
REPORT BY BRAD COLLIS
L aura Nuttall almost missed one of the biggest moments in human science , certainly the biggest moment in her research career . It was September 2015 and a global collaboration to detect gravitational waves was about to resume after a five-year hiatus while the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ( LIGO ) was upgraded to be four times more sensitive .
LIGO detects gravitational waves , or ripples in space-time , by the minute disturbances they make to space and time as they pass through the Earth .
Hopes were high that human science would finally detect what had been , for 100 years , an Einstein theory : that gravitational waves are produced when massive stellar objects such as black holes and neutron stars ( dead stars ) collide .
Dr Nuttall graduated from Lancaster University having studied physics , astrophysics and cosmology , and completed a PhD at Cardiff University . She is continuing her doctoral research at Syracuse University in the USA and is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration .
PHOTO : 123RF
ISSUE 2 / 2021
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