Barry Barish Quotes
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A lot of missions for NASA or experiments on accelerators happen through a whole process of scientific retreats, long-range planning, forming collaborations to do studies - all this kind of stuff. It's very democratic.
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If we are going to build an ambitious machine, then it's got to be a global machine.
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The fact that people can predict gravity wave sources that are within shouting distance makes me feel incredibly confident. Compared to monopoles, these sources are not just optimistic thinking.
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The waves are subtle, altering spacetime and the distance between objects as far apart as the Earth and the Moon by much less than the width of an atom. As such, gravitational radiation has not been directly detected yet. We hope to change that soon.
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There's some aura about a Nobel Prize, there's a prestige, that gives me a responsibility that I didn't have before, that goes beyond my own work, as a spokesman for science.
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I actually spent a lot of time reading about how professional managers work. And how people build bridges.
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I think the scientific goals and the technical challenges were the two things that equally motivated me.
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The problem for large scientific projects is to do something that is being done for the first time, balanced against cost, schedule. and promises to the government. That is a hard balancing act.
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If we get to the design sensitivity and make no detections, then there are a lot of things that will have to go back to the drawing board theoretically. If we fail, we're not expecting that the NSF will help bail it out somehow.
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Scientists, especially physicists, we're presumptuous and think we can do everything better than everybody else. And one thing that I realized early is, I had some talent managing and organizing things - you know, some people are better organizers than others - but why should I reinvent the wheel?
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I always wanted to be an experimental physicist and was attracted to the idea of using continuing advances in technology to carry out fundamental science experiments that could not be done otherwise.
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I have somewhat ambivalent feelings about the recognition of individuals when so much of this was a team effort.
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I can't imagine that, now that we have another way to look at the universe, that there isn't going to be some enormous surprises. Things that have nothing to do with what we already know.
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It isn't obvious and it took us a while to demonstrate that we could actually design a machine that bends.
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It's crazy that we happen to have a country where it depends on what political party you are in whether you believe in climate change or not.
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It seems kind of nutty to send up something new when there's something already there that can do the job.
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I live on the Santa Monica Beach and bike up and down almost every day. I like exercise, and I like literature a lot and plays and things like that.
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The first instrument is not the final instrument.
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The detection of gravitational waves is truly a triumph of modern large-scale experimental physics.
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I think there's a bit of truth that LIGO wouldn't be here if I didn't do it, so I don't think I'm undeserving.
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Einstein had two new predictions from general relativity. One was that light would bend. That was tested in 1919, and basically, he was proven right. The second prediction was gravitational waves, which took us 100 years to prove. The theory itself, which is thought by most to be rather obscure, you use every day, probably.
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Everything we know about the universe is studied by using telescopes or other instruments that look at visible light, infrared, ultraviolet or X-ray - different wavelengths of electromagnetic interactions. Only 4 percent of what's in the universe gives off electromagnetic radiation, so we don't have any handle on the rest.
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We said that with initial LIGO, detections would be possible, and with Advanced LIGO, detections would be probable.
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The 4th Concept is welcomed and encouraged. In the end, it's my hope and belief that the best ideas are what will be used in these detectors.