Defying Gravity!

Dear Readers,

Hello! You've entered the Lair of the one and only Carissa Cirelli.
Welcome.

Thank you for stopping by.

So you're probably wondering what I'm researching and where I'm going and who I am and all that. Well, then, let's get down to business.

So I'm Carissa Cirelli, a senior at BASIS Flagstaff and these coming months, I'm going to be researching THE GRAVITON with Dr. Darrel Smith and Dr. Michele Zanolin down at Embry Riddle in Prescott. What's the graviton, you ask?

Basically, it's not a real word, according to this blog's spell check. And technically, it's not a real particle either, because it hasn't yet been discovered. The graviton is a hypothetical particle that mediates the gravitational force. What does that mean?

Well, by mediates, I mean "carries" or "transmits." Part of the reason physicists think the graviton exists is because all the other fundamental forces (the strong force, the weak force, and the electromagnetic force) are mediated by particles. The strong force is mediated by gluons, the weak force by W and Z bosons, and the electromagnetic force by photons. If you've taken a high school physics course, you're probably most familiar with photons and the electromagnetic force. The electromagnetic force occurs in electric fields, magnetic fields, and in light . You've probably heard how light is both a wave and a particle? A photon is the particle form of light, and it is what light is made of. More on all this in the coming blog posts.

So the graviton is analogous to a photon. It is a particle that transmits gravity. It is what gravity is made of (I'm simplifying, but basically).

Taking this analogy further, gravity is also thought to be a wave, just like how light is both a wave and a particle. In addition to being in the form of the graviton, physicists think gravity can be in the form of a wave, the gravitational wave. These gravitational waves ripple out from objects with mass (stars, planets, even us) and distort the space-time fabric.

So that's a little intro on the graviton and the gravitational wave.

So what exactly is Dr. Zanolin researching? Well, Dr. Zanolin is one of the many physicists working on detecting the graviton. He's working with the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration, a group of more than 1000 scientists worldwide whose aim is to directly detect gravitational waves using the detectors LIGO and GEO600. More info here
http://www.ligo.org/
and here
https://ligo.caltech.edu/page/about

I'll go more into the specifics of Dr. Zanolin's focus over time, but for now, here's his site:
http://mercury.pr.erau.edu/~zanolinm/

And cool article posted today! As you can see, this is a pretty hot topic. I'm super excited!
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/woohoo-email-stokes-rumor-gravitational-waves-have-been-spotted

That's all for today, folks. I've got lots yet to explain, from the four fundamental forces to how the LIGO instruments work so I'll be posting all this information over time.

Have a great day! :)

Bibliography:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/05/what-are-gravitons/
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34815668
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/questions/graviton.html