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The Register Lecture: Great gravitational waves! LIGO's next cosmic act

Re-discovering the final frontier with Professor Mark Hannam

If you think the revolution in our understanding of the final frontier ignited by the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015 is over - think again.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and interferometer pal Virgo caused a sensation when a team of more than 900 scientists detected gravitational waves 100 years after Albert Einstein theorised the existence of these ripples through space and time. Fresh observations of black holes and neutron stars have rolled out since then, changing our understanding of both astronomy and physics and helping earn LIGO’s principal founders a Nobel prize for physics.

Professor Mark Hannam was part of the Cardiff University team involved in that important breakthrough, leading work to produce theoretical models of the gravitational wave signal using some advanced software modelling.

At The Register's November 2018 lecture, Mark discussed the next chapter in this experiment as it underwent a major upgrade that will let LIGO and Virgo probe even deeper into the cosmos.

If you couldn't make Mark's lecture of if you simply want to brush up, you can now enjoy the video on this page.®

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