Pulsars
Einstein predicted them. Princeton scientists won the 1993 Nobel Physics Prize for indirectly demonstrating they exist. But no one has directly detected gravitational waves, or "ripples" in the space-time continuum.
Andrea N. Lommen, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Franklin and Marshall College, however, hopes to change that. And she just won a highly competitive grant of $654,917 to do so.
The National Science Foundation recently selected Lommen as the recipient of a CAREER award for her project, "Gravitational Wave Detection Using Pulsars."
The CAREER award is the NSF's most prestigious grant supporting early career development activities of teacher-scholars who effectively integrate research and education in their projects. Only about 400 scientists receive the awards each year, out of a pool of more than 2500 applicants.
This is Franklin & Marshall's second CAREER award – Ryan Mehl, assistant professor of chemistry, won one in 2005.
"I'm very pleased that the NSF has recognized the outstanding work that Professor Lommen and her students have done," says Richard A. Fluck, associate dean of the faculty. "The Foundation sees the promise of even greater work from her in the future."
Lommen's project is both elegant and ambitious. She proposes to use observations of pulsars – "dead stars with the mass of the sun and the size of Lancaster that spin as fast as a blender" – to detect gravitational wave signatures.
"Think of pulsars as a lighthouse beam," she says, putting her complex topic in laymen's terms. "Every time the star spins, a beam cuts across the universe."
Those beams are like clocks, she explains, "enormously regular in their pulsations." Lommen's goal is to use these convenient clocks, "donated by the universe," to detect arrhythmias. Instead of the regular bum-bum-bum of a rotating pulsar, she's hoping to find a bum-de-bum-bum. This deviation in the rhythm could be the signature of a gravitational wave.
Spinning dead stars called pulsars cast beams of light across warped space-time. An irregularity in the beam could signal a gravitational wave. Image is courtesy of Marjorie E. Gonzalez at the University of British Columbia.
Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves, but so far, observations have yet to capture these phantoms. Any scientist who successfully detects them will open up new ways of looking at the universe, aiding in the continual quest to discover the origins of the universe itself.
While Lommen's project focuses on the heavens, it involves a great deal of earthly collaboration – including high school students, Franklin & Marshall undergraduates, a teaching postdoctoral fellow and Lommen – in all cases either mentoring or being mentored on several different levels.
"All my life, I noticed I've gained a lot, in both directions, from mentoring," she says. "I wouldn't be here if people hadn't said 'you can do that.' At the same time, being a mentor has raised my own performance level."
Numerous pulsar researchers will participate, with the North American Nano-Hertz Observatory of Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) in the lead.
Franklin & Marshall undergraduates will participate in the research, introducing them to a global network of astronomers.
A teaching postdoctoral fellow will aid in the project, thus preparing him or her for a lifetime of balanced educational and research goals.
High school students, both in Lancaster and Australia, will also conduct observations in their classrooms by remotely operating a telescope that's part of Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia. These halfway-around-the-world observers will work in paired classrooms, fostering young scientists in an environment of international collaboration. This Web site – http://black-hole-net.mit.csu.edu.au/telescope/main.asp -- will provide the window through which high school students will peer.
And finally, the project will involve annual collaborative meetings with the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics at Penn State University as well as joint efforts with international gravitational wave and pulsar researchers whose telescopes regularly scour the void.
What happens if she is successful and the research detects gravitational waves? It could lead to a breakthrough as momentous as the invention of the telescope.
Detecting gravitational waves "won't help us build better toilets or make better sticky notes," she says wryly, "but it will help us move beyond the mere observation of light, or electromagnetic radiation, which is our only observational key to the universe at the moment."
Fluck concurs. "This award will give Professor Lommen and her students – including Franklin & Marshall College students and high school students – the opportunity to study a fundamental problem in physics and astronomy," he says.
