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IEEE Milestone Dedication: Gravitational-Wave Antennas

The IEEE Milestone Dedication honoring Gravitational-Wave Antennas will occcur on February 3, 2021 1630-1800 UTC. Registration information can be found here:  www.GWAMilestone.com/register.

This is a 90-minute livestream event (YouTube Live and/or FaceBook Live) running from 1630-1800 UTC (some local times are included here) which honors the uniquely sophisticated devices that confirmed Einstein’s prediction of 104 years ago about Gravity Waves.

This informational and entertaining program is intended for a wide audience.

It will include the dedication of an IEEE Milestone in 3 locations: Hanford, Washington USA, Livingston, Louisiana USA, and Cascina (Pisa), Tuscany ITALY. These are the sites of the two LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories) antennas in the US, and the Virgo antenna at EGO (European Gravitational Observatory) in Italy.

You will learn about what led to construction of these antennas, whose kilometer-scale arms can detect the tremendous gravity resultant from the merger of black holes and binary neutron stars that are up to 3 billion light-years away.

Gravitational waves were first detected on 14 September 2015, using two LIGO antennas in the US, and many have been detected since that time. On 14 August 2017, the 3 antennas working together determined with sufficient angular precision the location of a binary neutron star merger.  This triggered a follow-up campaign of nearly 70 observatories around the world and in orbit to detect electromagnetic “messengers” ranging across the spectrum from x-ray and gamma-ray bursts to radio waves.

Caltech’s Rich Abbott will lead a discussion with Drs. Rainer Weiss, Kip S. Thorne and Barry C. Barish, who jointly were awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”

The parallel development of the European Virgo antenna will be addressed by key Virgo antenna contributors Kathy Nary Man and Jean-Yves Vinet. Current Asian developments will be described by Takaaki Kajita, principal investigator of Japan’s KAGRA antenna, who shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass.”

Other contributors from the US, Italy and France, along with government and agency dignitaries, round out the program, which will conclude with the unveiling of bronze IEEE Milestone plaques at each of the 3 sites.

A wealth of information is at www.GWAMilestone.com

Event Registration

NOTE: You will need to use YouTube Live or Facebook Live to experience this event.

Sign up on the Event Registration Site to have the YouTube Live and Facebook Live links emailed to you (at least twice, including shortly before the event starts).  Everyone (and in particular IEEE members) is encouraged to register to allow us to best appreciate the breadth of worldwide interest in this event.

Register even if the time is inconvenient for you so that we can email you when a video has been posted to this website.

Alternately, or in addition to using the above registration site, add this event to your Google Calendar or your Apple or Outlook Calendar.  Your calendar entry will point back to this page, which will include the links to the YouTube Live page and the Facebook Live page by no later than Friday, 29 January.

Note: the registration page (www.GWAMilestone.com/register) will include the YouTube Live and Facebook Live streaming links for this event no later than Friday, Jan. 29.

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