NEWS

The Wallace Herbert family of Ruston, the IDEA Place, and Louisiana Tech’s College of Engineering and Science will present, “Astronomy’s New Messengers: Listening to the Universe with Gravitational Waves”, a lecture by Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez on Wednesday, January 27 at 6 p.m. in Wyly Auditorium on the Louisiana Tech campus.

Admission is free and the public is invited to attend.

The lecture accompanies the traveling exhibit “Astronomy’s New Messengers”, which provides hands-on experiments and displays that explain the science behind gravity waves and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO. The exhibit will be on display at Tech’s IDEA Place in Woodard Hall from January 18 through February 4.

The Wallace Herbert Memorial Astronomy Lecture is sponsored by the family of the late Dr. Wallace Herbert, a Louisiana Tech math professor, who taught astronomy and built the first telescope for the campus. Herbert was also the first director of the Tech Planetarium and Observatory.

LIGO is a facility dedicated to the detection of cosmic gravitational waves and the harnessing of these waves for scientific research. It consists of two separate installations within the United States, one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana.

Written by Catherine Fraser