Canceled: Rainer Weiss, ‘Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves’

Rainer Weiss, 2017 Nobel laureate and professor emeritus at MIT, will give a lecture at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 14 at the FedEx Global Education Center titled “Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves.”

The observation of gravitational waves from the mergers of compact binary sources opens a new way to learn about the universe, as well as test General Relativity in the limit of strong gravitational interactions – the dynamics of massive bodies traveling at relativistic speeds in a highly curved space-time.

Weiss was awarded the 2017 Nobel Physics Prize for his “decisive contributions to the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) detector and the observation of gravitational waves.” He is also well-known for his research in cosmic microwave background radiation. He oversaw a scientific working group for NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer satellite which, in 1989, precisely measured microwave radiation and its quantum fluctuations. In addition to the Nobel Prize, in recent years, Weiss was awarded the Gruber Prize, the Einstein Prize, a Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, the Shaw Prize, the Kavli Prize, and the Princess of Asturias Award.