Kind: captions
Language: en
I think I've always been interested in
anything that has to do with space and
time the Big Bang you know when was
space itself created when did clocks
start to tick and most recently black
holes
I'm Janna Levin astrophysicist and
author no I was definitely not one of
those kids with the chemistry set in the
basement I did not see myself as a
scientist but now I see the pieces I
remember looking out my window until the
dark of the sky and inventing theories
of the universe my first theory of
cosmology was that if the earth was
round
I thought we lived inside the globe and
I used to wonder how far away is the
eggshell of the sky
I was stunned when I realized we lived
on top of the globe I mean that was even
crazier right now we're in my studio at
a place called Pioneer works a cultural
center where I'm director of sciences
this building was originally an
ironworks Factory
I've taken over the third floor this is
our scissor lift which is our
alternative to an elevator scientists
come here and do research we have
workshops these are a series called
scientific controversies many-worlds x
arrow can we explain the world it's a
real experiment in the role of science
and culture the LIGO project the
discovery of gravitational waves
Einstein first proposed gravitational
waves is literally a squeezing and
stretching of space and time caused by
the gravitational pull of objects that
passes through like a wave the LIGO
experiment tries to record the existence
of these ripples in space-time and it's
a massive undertaking an experiment in
Louisiana another in Washington State
people laid down their lives to build
this crazy instrument and they did so
without any guarantee that the ringing
of space-time would ever be loud enough
to detect I mean even Einstein said I
will never detect them
never
even the gravitational waves caused by
the earth and the sun's motion is so
tiny that it's imperceptible the only
objects capable of creating big enough
gravitational waves are things like big
black holes colliding stars exploding by
2015 they're near at four billion
dollars and people who started this
experiment in their 30s and 40s or in
their 80s now they're getting kind of
nervous whether it's going to actually
make a detection but it did in the
middle of the night a signal comes from
the southern sky that's been traveling
1.3 billion years brings the instrument
Louisiana cruises across the continent
and rings the Machine in Washington
state that was a great day I cannot deny
if you think about the span of time
between two black holes colliding over a
billion years ago and the time it washed
over the earth when they were emitted
multi-celled organisms were just
differentiating on the earth and it's
near a nearby star system when
Einstein's board
and a hundred years after that enters
the solar system it is this beautiful
cosmic event that so proceeds human
history and made human history
[Music]