Barry Barish: On the Shoulders of Giants

Acknowledging the scientists who blazed intellectual trails before him, Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen a little further it was by standing on the shoulders of giants.” In this special annual series, we invite our audience to stand on the shoulders of a modern-day giant. This year, we are honored to present an address by a titan of physics, Barry Barish. Professor Barish served as the Director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) from 1997-2005 and created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. This year—one hundred years after Einstein’s prediction of gravitational waves—Professor Barish and the entire LIGO team announced a dramatic milestone: the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of the merger of a pair of black holes. Join us for Professor Barish’s 2016 On the Shoulders of Giants address, “From Einstein to Gravitational Waves and Beyond.”

Original program date: June 4, 2016

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Introduction by Brian Greene 00:00

Barry Barish introduction 1:26

Newton’s Theory of Gravity 3:36

Mercury’s Orbit 9:14

What is the Einstein Cross? 16:23

Einstein predicted gravitational waves 20:30

How to make a gravitational waves 29:59

First interferometer exploration by Robert Forward 37:37

How does LIGO work? 42:30

LIGO beam pipe 47:50

What LIGO measured 54:46

Where to look for gravitational waves1:00:06

Where is LIGO going to go now? 1:02:20