Event Details

LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves: A Film by Les Guthman

The thrilling, award-winning, inside story of the discovery that topped NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC's list of “The top 20 Scientific Discoveries of the Decade," the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of gravitational waves from deep space, 2015-2017.

Two discoveries two years apart, which opened a radical new era in astronomy. First, two colliding black holes and then the discovery of two crashing neutron stars and their spectacular light show opened up the 95% of the universe that had been dark to our existing observatories and space telescopes. It's the violent "warped side" of the universe predicted by Einstein -- but never seen until now.

Director Les Guthman witnessed and filmed this dramatic and emotional peak in the lives of the1,000 scientists around the world who risked their careers on a 40-year, $1 billion search for these exquisite messengers from the warped side.

Refreshments at 3 PM.