Professor Nelson Christensen will describe the effort of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) to observe gravitational waves. LIGO has now observed gravitational waves from the merger of binary black holes systems; these observations will be discussed. LIGO is also attempting to observe gravitational waves produced in the earliest moments of the universe. The efforts by the Carleton group, and especially its students, will be highlighted.
This program took place on Tuesday, March 21, 2017
About the Speaker
Nelson Christensen is an experimental physicist with current interests in quantum chaos, medical imaging, and gravitational radiation. At Carleton, Nelson teaches courses on Newtonian Physics, Relativity and Particles, Electricity and Magnetism, and many labs. His three-year project “RUI: Parameter Estimation, Data Analysis, and Detector Characterization for LIGO” continued international collaborative analyses of data in search of gravitational wave signals, including signals from massive black hole systems and supernova produced signals with the assistance of undergraduate researchers.
He has been teaching at Carleton since 1999 where he is the George H. and Marjorie F. Dixon Professor of Physics.