An international team of scientists, including physics and astronomy Prof. Shane Larson, will construct a new gravitational wave detector with the European Space Agency over the next 10 years, the University announced Jan. 25.
Larson is a U.S. board member on the consortium overseeing the construction of the detector, named the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. He was also a member of the international team that first detected gravitational waves in 2016.
“This is a huge milestone for LISA,” Larson said in a Thursday news release. “This will be the first gravitational-wave observatory in space. It will be the only one of its kind, likely for decades, and will transform the landscape of astronomy.”
He added that the new technology for the detector has already been built and tested as part of mission design. LISA will consist of three satellite devices orbiting around the sun.
Larson is the associate director of NU’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics. His research group at NU focuses on simulating the Milky Way’s population of “white dwarf” stars, a major observational source for LISA.
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