Kip Thorne, recipient of the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics, will give a lecture on Thursday, November 20, at 4 p.m. in the JSB Auditorium. Thorne will discuss "Creating Gravitational-Wave Astronomy and exploring black holes, neutron stars, and the birth of the universe."
Motivated to pursue astronomy by his mother in Logan in the 1940s, Thorne went on to devote a half century, with colleagues, to creating gravitational wave astronomy — perhaps the technically most difficult project that physicists have ever pursued. In this lecture he will describe that quest, including his Logan roots which drove him into it, and a vision for gravitational-wave astronomy that he and his students formulated, and how that vision grew into a collaboration of a thousand physicists and engineers at 82 institutions in 16 nations, with the expenditure of a billion dollars of US taxpayer money and the momentous 2015 discovery of gravitational waves from colliding black holes a billion light years from earth. Thorne's story will highlight some remarkable achievements that underpinned success, including computer-based insights into storms in the fabric of spacetime, and the invention of quantum technology that will impact many areas of science and technology in the coming decades. He will conclude by describing how gravitational waves are now being used to explore black holes and neutron stars, and the goal of exploring the big-bang birth of our universe.