Public Lecture by Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Barry Barish

10th Anniversary of the First Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves:

Join us in celebrating 10 years of detections at LIGO on Saturday September 13th 2025.

LIGO will have 3 separate events on site on September 13th, each requiring their own seperate tickets.

**Public Lecture Tickets DO NOT include access to the Staff Panel Event, or any of the September Second Saturday Tours .

For tickets to either of those events, please get a separate ticket via our Website:

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/WA/page/lho-tours-and-events

Event Information:

Join us in welcoming Nobel Prize winning physicist Barry Barish back to the LIGO Hanford Observatory for a special public lecture commemorating the 10th anniversary since the first direct detection of gravitational waves back on September 14th 2015.

About Barry Barish:

Barish was born on January 27, 1936, in Omaha, Nebraska, and spent his childhood in Los Angeles. He received his BA in physics in 1957 and his PhD in experimental particle physics in 1962, both from UC Berkeley. In 1963, he joined Caltech as a research fellow. He became an assistant professor in 1966, an associate professor in 1969, and a professor of physics in 1972. He was named the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics in 1991 and Linde Professor, Emeritus, in 2005. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society, the latter of which he served as president. In 2002, he received the Klopsteg Memorial Lecture Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers and, in 2016, he received the Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society. He won the Henry Draper Medal in 2017 with Whitcomb.

2017 Nobel Prize in physics:

The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three key players in the development and ultimate success of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Caltech's Barry C. Barish, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus; and the other half was awarded to MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus.

On September 14, 2015, the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LIGO made the first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space and time predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years earlier. The public announcement took place on February 11, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Each of the twin LIGO observatories—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—picked up the feeble signal of gravitational waves generated 1.3 billion years ago when two black holes spiraled together and collided.

The detections ushered in a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. LIGO and Virgo provided astronomers with an entirely new set of tools with which to probe the cosmos. Previously, all astronomy observations have relied on light—which includes X-rays, radio waves, and other types of electromagnetic radiation emanating from objects in space—or on very-high-energy particles called neutrinos and cosmic rays. Now, astronomers can learn about cosmic objects through the quivers they make in space and time.

For more information, please visit our webpage https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/

An article specifically about the 2017 Nobel Prize in phyics can be found here:

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-2017-nobel-prize#cit

Additional things to note:

• Visitors do not require any special badging to visit LIGO.
• Entry begins 15 minutes before your scheduled tour time.
• No flash Photography during the lecture, we kindly request that you do not record/video staff members without their permission.
• LIGO’s facilities are wheelchair accessible, though you will encounter two slopes during the site tour itself.

For additional information, please check our website.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

LIGO Hanford Observatory, 127124 N Route 10, Richland, United States