La Pedrera, the perfect scenario to talk about gravitational waves

2016-03-18 00:00:00
La Pedrera, the perfect scenario to talk about gravitational waves
On March 17th, the building La Pedrera in Barcelona was the scenario of the Ciència Afterwork first session organized by the Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera. The protagonists of the talk were gravitational waves, the researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) Carlos F. Sopuerta and the director of the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), Lluís Torner.

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Torner gave an introduction on the subject noting that “the essence of science is try to make things that seems impossible, for example listening to gravitational waves.” ICFO director compared the detection of these waves to “listening how ants drink water at Collserola Mountain, from the Camp Nou”.

Carlos F. Sopuerta, principal investigator of LISA gravitational astronomy group affirmed that the building of La Pedrera, designed by Antoni Gaudí “is the perfect scenario to talk about gravitational waves because gravity is geometry”. He explained how the LIGO experiment first detected gravitational waves on Earth confirming its existence, predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago. “The LISA Pathfinder mission now has an even greater challenge which is to listen gravitational waves from space”.

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Sopuerta explained the mission of the European Space Agency, which has just begun science operations to test technology that will detect gravitational waves in space and in which his group in the ICE (IEEC-CSIC) plays a very important role. The researcher said that “the detection of gravitational waves opens a new era of astronomy that will allow us to know events that took place in the early universe.”

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