Let's take part in a brilliant and loud astrophysical event!

Dear Mrs. Collins,

We are French senior high school students with a major in science and we are very interested in the recent detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO and Virgo collaborations.

During our physics class on October 16th we will watch the live webcast of the press conference taking place in Washington, D.C.

We are very excited to know more about your groundbreaking multimessenger astronomy observations never witnessed before. We have many questions to ask the astronomers and physicists who will report on Monday and having the opportunity to raise one question would be a thrilling experience for us!

Thank you in advance for your reply and congratulation for your terrific work and the boldness of National Science Foundation having funded this research program. 

Best whishes,

The European class of Lycee Brassens de Villeneuve le Roi

PS1:

Here are some questions we may ask:

How can you be sure the gravitational wave detected come from a black hole merger or a neutron star merger?

How much energy carried by gravitational waves do you absorb during a detection?

We learn in high shool that electromagnetic waves are made of photons, could you tell from your experiments if GW are made of quanta and how many of them do you collect in one detection?

We know electromagnetic waves have different frequencies and are classified according to different domains : radio, microwave, IR, visible, UV, X rays and gamma rays. Are there such domains in the GW Spectrum and what are their names?

Can you forecast how many neutron star mergers with electromagnetic counterparts LIGO-Virgo may detect during your next scientific run?

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Greetings:

Thank you for your interest in the LIGO press conference webcast on Monday, Oct. 16, 2017.

The following URL will go live the day of the event: https://scontent.webcaster4.com/web/nsfligo17

No password is required. There will be a button on the page to ask questions. If you need closed captioning, you must use this URL.

The webcast will also be available on YouTube at the following address: https://www.youtube.com/c/VideosatNSF/live

You will not be able to ask questions from the YouTube video and the chat will be disabled.

Thank you,

Jamison

Jamison Schneider

Public Affairs and Media Relations Group

National Science Foundation


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Dear Mr. Hook,

We are French senior high school students with a major in science and we are very interested in the recent detections of gravitational waves made by LIGO and Virgo collaborations.

During our physics class on October 16th we will watch the live webcast of the press conference taking place in Garching.

We are very excited to know more about your groundbreaking multimessenger astronomy observations never witnessed before. We have many questions to ask the astronomers and physicists who will report on Monday. Could you tell us about any mean to raise one question to the panelists?

Thank you in advance for your reply and congratulation for your wonderful scientific work and your ability to make European people achieve common goals with international collaborations. 

Best whishes,

 

The European class of Lycee Brassens de Villeneuve le Roi

Hi
Thanks for your interest. If the media do not have any questions left, we will cue up one of your questions.
Best,
Lars