Gravitational Waves Archives - Fulbright Student Program Blog

Detecting Gravitational Waves at Home and Abroad

October 4, 2017

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy, visiting Florence

Fulbrighters achieve remarkable things! Are you following the announcements for this year’s Nobel Prize winners? So far, two Fulbright alumni to France have become 2017 Nobel Laureates, Fulbright U.S. Student alumnus Michael Rosbash and Fulbright U.S. Scholar alumnus Kip S. Thorne, for Physiology or Medicine and Physics, respectively.

Today, we are re-posting an article written in 2016 by Fulbright U.S. Student alumnus to Italy, Daniel Hoak, as he was part of the team of scientists who worked on the the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves – the very project that contributed to Kip S. Thorne becoming one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners for Physics!

The Fulbright Program congratulates Kip S. Thorne and Daniel Hoak for their outstanding and ongoing work in the field of Physics.

Two months ago, physicists around the world were set ‘chirping’ with the announcement that gravitational waves had been detected for the first time. The detection is the culmination of decades of work, and it represents the beginning of a new era in astronomy.

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U.S. Fulbright

From Two to Infinity: What the Second Detection of Gravitational Waves Tells Us About the Future

July 20, 2016

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy, visiting Florence

Last month, scientists in the LIGO and Virgo scientific collaborations announced the second direct detection of gravitational waves, from the orbit and merger of a pair of black holes. The event, named GW151226, arrived in the early morning on the day after Christmas, and has been nicknamed the “Boxing Day event” by the collaborations. With a second event in hand, gravitational wave science has moved beyond the era of sensational first detection, and is evolving into a reliable tool for astronomy and physics.

I recently finished my Fulbright year working at the Virgo gravitational wave observatory outside of Pisa, Italy. The last time Virgo listened for gravitational wave was in 2011, and since then, the instrument has been off-line for a complete upgrade.

At Virgo, I’m part of the team of scientists who are putting the final touches on the upgrade. To borrow a phrase from James Merrill, our job is to make wholeness out of hodgepodge: we’re creating a functional detector from the precision equipment that has been designed and built over the last five years. We plan to have the detector on-line this winter, in time to join the two LIGO observatories in the United States as they listen for gravitational waves.

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U.S. Fulbright

Detecting Gravitational Waves at Home and Abroad

April 26, 2016

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy

I’ve been a member of the team that made the detection since 2005, when I joined the staff of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana. Later, I went to grad school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I earned my Ph.D. last fall. My doctoral research focused on data analysis with gravitational wave detectors, and I assisted with upgrades to the LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington that made the detection possible.

For my Fulbright research, I’m helping to upgrade the Virgo detector, an experiment located outside of Pisa, Italy. Using a third detector to listen for gravitational waves will improve the science tremendously: we’ll be able to detect weaker signals, across more of the sky, and work out their position and properties with greater accuracy.

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