"Getting Wavy With It" - a Talk by Professor Stefano Arnone
Professor Stefano Arnone
John Cabot University’s Student Government just launched a new initiative, “Prof Talks,” which gives professors a chance to share their knowledge and expertise by presenting their research. At the same time, the JCU community is exposed to topics that are not necessarily covered in classes.
The first talk in the series took place on Thursday, February 16, 2017, with Professor Stefano Arnone’s presentation “Getting wavy with it.”
Prof. Arnone, whose main area of research is Quantum Field Theory, presented on gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime caused by mass motion. In laymen terms, as he explained it, gravitational waves could be described as the ripples created by a pebble falling into a pond. However, in this case the universe is the pond, while two black holes merging would be the pebble.
Gravitational waves, Prof. Arnone continued, were first hypothesized by Einstein in 1915 with the Theory of General Relativity, but for a century scientists could not find any direct proof of their existence. On September 14, 2015 proof was finally discovered. The gravitational waves were detected by the twin dedicated observatories located in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington. The observatories, called Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), were able to observe the distortion of a light beam caused by gravitational waves resulting from the merging of two black holes, 1.3 billion years ago. The discovery, which was announced on February 11, 2016, was made possible by a collaboration between more than 1000 scientists from universities in 15 countries.
Professor Stefano Arnone is the Chair of the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Natural Sciences at John Cabot University. He holds a Dottorato di Ricerca (Ph.D.) in Physics from University of Rome “La Sapienza.” In addition to Quantum Field Theory, his research interests include the Exact Renormalization Group and gauge theories with (extended) supersymmetry. Prof. Arnone co-authored two papers that were recently published in two international peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Listen to the “Getting Wavy With It” Podcast.
For information on the next “Prof Talks” follow Student Government on Facebook.
