Students visit LIGO Lab in Livingston

Fifteen students from Dr. Kelly Lankford's History of Modern Science class visited the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana this past weekend. The lab is a specialized facility that studies gravitational waves, and the information is used, in part, to help determine the age and history of the universe.  

"LIGO has the most precise instrumentation humans have ever created, and I wouldn't have expected it to be located in such a rural Louisiana town," said Derek Dupre ('20), a member of the class. 

Raine Hasskew, a 2013 graduate of LSMSA and control room operator at LIGO, led a tour for the group that included seeing the control room, a model of the gravity wave detectors, and the concrete-encased "arms" of the facility.

The lab can detect evidence of stars that collided long ago which can help tell the story of the universe's development. Upon recording the gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, three LIGO physicists won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.

LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and has a twin facility in Hanford, Washington. A third facility opened in Italy last year, and a fourth is being built in Japan.

Lankford, lecturer of History, has been on faculty at LSMSA since 2012. Dr. Chris Hynes, senior lecturer of Chemistry and student research advisor, helped chaperone and provide transportation for the visit. 

LSMSA offers an advanced curriculum for the state's best and brightest students. More on the school's vision for academic rigor is available at www.LSMSA.edu/academics.