“If we want to answer the question of how our universe came to be and why we see the universe we do today, we have to understand things like black holes,” she says. “They’re important building blocks of the universe. If you want a complete picture of the world around us, then you need to use every messenger that nature provides. Gravitational waves are one such messenger, as is light.”
Detecting Gravitational Waves with LIGO
For a lot of Dr. Mavalvala’s profession, these gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that consequence from collisions between huge objects similar to black holes—have been theoretical.
“I got started with LIGO when I was a graduate student at MIT in the early 1990s,” Dr. Mavalvala says, referring to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the US. “The team of people who were working on it were seen as sort of a ragtag team of dreamers.” Her PhD adviser, Nobel laureate Dr. Rainer Weiss, was considered one of the founders of the undertaking, however a lot of her graduate college colleagues warned her to not pursue this path. At the time, there was nonetheless some debate about whether or not gravitational waves even existed. “It was sort of a maverick science,” she explains. “And I have to say, in some ways, that was part of the draw, to be part of something so improbable.”
After receiving her PhD at MIT, Dr. Mavalvala went on to do her postdoctoral work at LIGO, the place she continued as a analysis scientist, earlier than returning to MIT as a professor. Over her illustrious profession, she has received numerous prestigious awards and grants, together with the MacArthur “genius” grant and the Lahore Technology Award, and he or she was named the LGBTQ Scientist of the Year in 2014.
On September 14, 2015, although, every part modified. The LIGO inferometers (that are 3,000 kilometers aside) detected their first gravitational wave. The very first thing that Dr. Mavalvala felt? “Pure skepticism,” she says with fun. “This can’t be it!”
There have been many checks the scientists needed to undergo earlier than they have been capable of revel of their discovery and ensure that the detection was authentic. “The euphoria and ecstasy kind of started slowly,” she says. “It wasn’t like the moment I saw the symbol on a computer screen. I was like, ‘Wow, that was a slight glimmer of what this could be,’ but the first thing was, ‘Oh my goodness, no,’ you know? ‘Let’s check.’”
Working With Young People Is Important
As the dean of MIT’s School of Science, Dr. Mavalvala’s administrative duties are appreciable, however she enjoys being part of academia. It’s younger people who find themselves the key for her. “There’s an idea that the greatest scientific discoveries are made by wiry silver-haired scientists. But it’s the work of young people that enables all of these scientific discoveries.” She desires college students to know that they shouldn’t be afraid to leap in.
“I think one of the joys of being at a university, as opposed to being in any other setting, is teaching” she muses. “I get access to students because I run an active research group, but I do miss teaching.”