Joe Giaime

@giaime.net

218 Followers 158 Following

Professor, Physics and Astronomy (LSU), LIGO Livingston observatory head (Caltech). Content here is my personal take, not representing my organizations.

View of auditorium with around 150 people present for 2016 announcement of gravitational wave discovery.
Grey Heron looking for snacks, walking along the rim of a pond.
A group of smiling people—scientists, engineers, detector operators and other observatory specialists—post in LIGO Livingston's control room. Video displays on the wall and workstations show various real-time data relevant to the run. Also visible are three clocks: GPS seconds, UTC and local (CDT).
a modest-sized alligator suns itself near a green body of water. This is nothing to worry about.
Screencap of the Amazon app, showing a photo of pants instead of a book.
Amid concerns over potential cuts, Livingston's LIGO scientists mark 10th anniversary of monumental discovery BY CLAIRE GRUNEWALD | Staff writer Sep 14, 2025 A signal lasting less than a second traveled about 1.3 billion light years before it reached an obser vatory deep in the piney woods of Livingston 10 years ago. The brief signal — caused by a pair of black holes colliding - the first gravitational waves ever detected, and it created a new way for scientists to look into the uni-verse. The Sept. 14, 2015, detection con-tirmed a key prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of rela-tivity, earned the Nobel Prize in physics and kick-started a new era of astronomy. "Most of us had figured that with nature being perverse, that the first signal would be really hard to pull out of the noise. And then the signal came beautifully, beautifully clear," said Joseph Giaime, head of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Livingston.
po di um (po'dē-am) * n. pl. podiums or po dia (-de-a) 1. An elevated platform, as for an orchestra conductor or public speaker. 2. A stand for holding the notes of a public speaker; a lectern.
Gabriela González speaking in front of a projection screen that shows a caricature of Einstein surfing on a gravitational wave.
Owl, perched on a branch in a forest.