Come Learn About the Stars from Abelard Teacher C.J. Woodford!

If you follow science news, you will no doubt know that this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to the three scientists from the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration. Their accomplishment? They proved Einstein’s prediction by observing the universe’s gravitational waves for the very first time. The waves they saw had been created by the collision between two black holes, and took over a billion years to reach Earth.

 

On December 7, one of Abelard’s teachers will be giving a talk about these waves at an event that our grade 11 and 12 students will attend. CJ Woodford, who teaches computer science for us, is a 3rd year PhD candidate in the Physics Department at the University of Toronto. He works in the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and is a member of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration, working on binary black hole simulations and gravitational wave analysis.

His talk will give you a chance to get an up-close and personal take on the several Gravitational Waves discoveries that have changed science for the better. With the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015 and the recent observation of a binary neutron star, the LIGO-VIRGO collaboration and partners have broken records in physics, astronomy, and interferometry – with still more to come. CJ will lead a talk about what went into the LIGO that discovered the first gravitational wave, GW150914, from theoretical, engineering, and computer simulation viewpoints, plus some of the major discoveries that have accompanied the detections since.

The very exciting news is that you, a member of the public, can join our Abelard students and attend the talk as well, not only to find out more about the cutting edge of research, but also to get a sense of what it’s like to be an Abelardian. For more information, visit the AstroTours website here. The talk will be followed by a chance to look through some telescopes, get a tour of the planetarium, and to check out some virtual reality demonstrations. We hope you’ll come along!