I believe LIGO truly showcases the great discoveries that can be made by humanity when engineers and physicists come together from across the world to push the boundaries of science. LIGO especially showcases the thorough scientific methodology that is required to arrive at breakthrough findings. Being able to create detectors with that amount of precision requires great engineering and understanding of noise elimination. Once the data had been recorded, it was especially interesting to compare Einstein’s theory to the real data, seeing how both models worked hand-in-hand. LIGO pushed the boundaries of accuracy in instrumentation and international collaboration, proving that science keeps improving — it is a major scientific achievement of our time.

Though I understand that this presentation was targeted towards an audience that understands physics on a deeper level, I would have appreciated (as a high school graduate) understanding the mathematics behind Einstein’s general relativistic waves equations to understand the derivation of the strain constant. Otherwise, the lecture was great and interesting!