A pivotal week in Corey Gray's life began with a powwow in Alberta and culminated with a piece of history: The first-ever detection of gravitational waves from the collision of two neutron stars. Corey was on the graveyard shift at LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Hanford, Washington, when the historic signal came. This episode, Corey talks about the discovery, the "Gravitational Wave Grass Dance Special" that preceded it and how he got his Blackfoot name. (encore) Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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So Oki Tenetapi Netaniku Makoyosuku Guy Corey Gray.
Hi.
I was just giving a greeting in Blackfoot, and I gave my Blackfoot name, which is Wolf's Path, and also my name, Corey Gray.
I'm Regina Barber, and I've known Corey for years.
We've connected at conferences as fellow scientists of color.
I am a senior operations specialist at the LIGO Hanford Observatory in Eastern Washington State.
LIGO measures ripples in space called gravitational waves.
Yeah.
So what are gravitational waves for?
I guess the main thing, I would say that all of this comes from Albert Einstein.
It comes from his general theory of relativity in 1915.
Basically, gravity is just how masses bend the space around them.
And that's the idea of what gravity is in general relativity.
If you take this mass and accelerate it in space or space time, those accelerations vibrate spacetime.
And those vibrations, those wiggles in space time, are what gravitational waves are.