“On November 9, Shane Larson — a research associate professor of physics at Northwestern University and the Associate Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics — gave a lecture titled “The Cosmos in a Heartbeat.” The talk, part of the Kavli Foundation’s Fulldome Lecture Series at the Adler Planetarium, touched on many topics, including the birth and future of what astronomers call multi-messenger astronomy. Long awaited and finally possible only in the recent past, this new type of astronomy allows humans to view and understand the universe in ways never before possible. It not only helps us prove our theories of how things work, it also sets the stage for new and exciting discoveries with instruments soon to be sharing our skies….
….“The beautiful thing about multi-messenger astronomy is that it’s completely brand new. We’ve been talking about doing this for decades. And now that it’s finally here and we have the data, it really stimulates all of us to think about the whole process of answering questions in new and completely different ways,” Larson told Astronomy.”
Read the full article “Looking ahead to the LISA gravitational-wave detector” by Alison Klesman.
Image Credit: Adler Planetarium