July BRGS Meeting: Listening to the Universe: Gravitational Waves and the LIGO Observatories

Join us Friday, July 11, 2025

as Dr. Tabata Aira Ferreira

presents

Listening to the Universe: Gravitational Waves and the LIGO Observatories

Abstract

Gravitational waves can be defined as ripples in the fabric of spacetime produced by some of the most violent events in the universe, such as mergers of black holes and neutron stars.  They were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity in 1916, and despite many efforts, they were only directly detected in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).  There are two LIGO observatories, one in Hanford, Washington, and another in Livingston, Louisiana, and together with other terrestrial detectors, they search for these fascinating signals.  Since the beginning of the latest observing run, O4, which started in May 2023, more than two hundred significant candidates have already been detected, and more are expected. This presentation will introduce gravitational waves and their sources, the LIGO detectors and their working principles, exciting detections and discoveries, and some of the challenges the observatories face in searching for gravitational-wave signals.   

Biography

Dr. Tabata Aira Ferreira is a Brazilian physicist specializing in gravitational-wave detector data analysis and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2019.  She holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Unicamp (Brazil) and a master's and Ph.D. in astrophysics from INPE (Brazil).  Since the end of 2023, she has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at LSU, collaborating directly with LIGO scientists.  Taba is passionate about sharing this new way of observing the universe, and in her free time, she enjoys watching Harry Potter and playing games with family and friends.