Advanced LIGO Documentary Project

On October 3, 2017, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish won the Nobel Prize in Physics for LIGO's historic first observation of gravitational waves in September 2015.{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2017/press.html |title=LIGO Nobel Prize Announcement}}

On September 14, 2015, the Advanced LIGO Documentary team was on location filming at the LIGO Livingston Observatory when the detection was made.{{cite web|url=http://www.ligo.org/magazine/LIGO-magazine-issue-8.pdf#page=9|title=LIGO Magazine}} Over the next five months, it had exclusive media access to document the long, careful process of scientific verification that was conducted by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration to confirm that the received signal was in fact a gravitational wave, as predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago.{{cite web|url=http://www.ligo.org/magazine/LIGO-magazine-issue-8.pdf#page=14|title=LIGO Magazine}}

The detection was announced by LIGO at the National Press Club in Washington DC on February 11, 2016.{{cite web|url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/11/gravitational-waves-discovery-hailed-as-breakthrough-of-the-century |title=The Guardian|website=TheGuardian.com |date=11 February 2016 }}

In addition to its filming of the secret internal confirmation months of the gravitational wave detection and LIGO's continuing breakthrough science,{{cite web|url=https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/press-release-gw170817 |title=GW170817 Announcement}} the Advanced LIGO Documentary Project filmed LIGO's Nobel Prize week in Stockholm; three important post-detection lectures by Thorne,{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMxo98Y-KoE |title=Kip Thorne 2016 Talk|website=YouTube }} Barish{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqJ0fXWRays |title=Barry Barish 2016 Talk|website=YouTube }} and LIGO astrophysicist Alessandra Buonanno.{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmZnE6Ut3p4 |title=Alessandra Buonanno 2016 Talk|website=YouTube }} It also filmed the LIGO Scientific Collaboration semi-annual meeting at CERN two weeks after its August 2017 detection of two colliding neutron stars, which launched the new age of multi-messenger astronomy and lead LIGO astrophysicist Daniel Holz to tell the New York Times, "I can't think of a similar situation in the field of science in my lifetime, where a single event provides so many staggering insights about our universe.”{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/science/ligo-neutron-stars-collision.html?_r=0 |title=New York Times|website=The New York Times |date=16 October 2017 |last1=Overbye |first1=Dennis }}

In June 2016, the Advanced LIGO Documentary Project produced the two LIGO programs at the World Science Festival in New York, including the main stage panel moderated by theoretical physicist and best-selling author Brian Greene, featuring five of the key physicists behind the historic detection, including Rai Weiss and Barry Barish, and four short videos{{cite web|url=https://vimeo.com/203778188 |title=Four Videos for World Science Festival 2016}} from the Project's exclusive footage inside the discovery.{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj6vV3T4ok8&t=154s |title=LIGO 2016 World Science Festival Panel on YouTube|website=YouTube }} The program streams on YouTube and as of June 2020 has been viewed more than 2.2 million times, making it the third-most viewed full-length program in the World Science Festival's 13 years of streaming.

In the fall of 2016, the Advanced LIGO Documentary Project received a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation to continue its filming of the LIGO project, now with a focus on the new era of gravitational-wave astronomy ushered in by the historic detection of GW150914. In early 2017, MathWorks joined as sponsoring partner.

The first video of A DISCOVERY THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, produced under the NSF grant, was released in spring 2017: "Mirrors That Hang on Glass Threads".{{cite web|url=https://vimeo.com/203776385 |title=Mirrors That Hang on Glass Threads|date=13 February 2017 }} The second episode, "The New Age of Gravitational Wave Astronomy", was released in summer 2017.{{cite web|url=https://vimeo.com/226227194 |title=The New Age of Gravitational Wave Astronomy|date=19 July 2017 }} Episode 3, "GW170817: So Many Astonishing Insights About Our Universe", was released in February 2018.{{cite web|url=https://vimeo.com/249961139 |title=GW170817: So Many Astonishing Insights About Our Universe|date=6 January 2018 }} The remaining five episodes were released in 2019. Episodes 10, 11 and 12, produced with the support of MathWorks, has been delayed by the pandemic and will be released in 2021.

The channel of Advanced LIGO Documentary Project has more than 30K views on YouTube, which ranks among the top 1 percent in the category of scientific education. In addition to streaming on YouTube, the video series streams on all five LIGO websites, at Caltech, MIT, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, the LIGO Hanford Observatory and the LIGO Livingston Observatory,{{cite web|url=https://www.ligo.org/ |title=LIGO: A Discover That Shook the World on ligo.org}} and on the Advanced LIGO Documentary Project's Vimeo Site,{{cite web|url=http://www.vimeo.com/ligofilms |title=Advanced LIGO Documentary Project Vimeo Site}} where it has another 25K views. The series on this site includes a ninth episode bringing together all eight short a-LIGO SNAP profiles at the end of the first eight episodes. The series also will soon be distributed online by the National Science Foundation's Science Zone educational network.

On September 5, 2020, the fifth anniversary of LIGO's historic discovery, Les Guthman published a book based on the video series, with the same title, LIGO: A Discovery That Shook the World. {{cite book|url=https://books2read.com/LIGO-ADiscoveryThatShooktheWorld |title=Book: LIGO: A Discovery That Shook the World|date=14 September 2020 }}

{{reflist}}

• [https://www.ligothefilm.com "LIGO" Documentary Official Website]
• [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVpvE6dOtP58hyzYaBDi8nQ Advanced LIGO Documentary Project on YouTube]
• [http://www.vimeo.com/ligofilms Advanced LIGO Documentary Project on Vimeo]
• [https://books2read.com/LIGO-ADiscoveryThatShooktheWorld "LIGO: A Discovery That Shook the World" book]
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xj6vV3T4ok8&t=154s LIGO 2016 World Science Festival Panel, on YouTube]
• [https://vimeo.com/ligofilms/ecpanel1 LIGO Documentary Panel at Explorers Club, NYC]

Category:Gravitational-wave astronomy