During a visit to Southern California to promote Scottish trade and technology and to strengthen exchanges with American counterparts--particularly in education--Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell will visit the 40-meter test bed of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The University of Glasgow is a collaborative partner in the LIGO project.
Fully operational since 2001 and funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, LIGO is a scientific facility for the detection of astrophysical gravitational waves for the purpose of better understanding the unseen universe. These waves were first predicted by Albert Einstein. LIGO was designed and is managed by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and operates twin facilities in Livingston, Louisiana, and in Hanford, Washington. Research is conducted by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, some 500 scientists at more than 40 universities and institutes around the United States and in eight foreign countries. The facility on the Caltech campus is a one-percent length-scale model upon which the full-size LIGO observatories were based.
McConnell, who was formerly a mathematics teacher and has a strong interest in science and technology, served as finance minister and then education minister before becoming the third person to serve as Scotland's First Minister in November 2001. After the 2003 election he was again nominated by the Parliament to hold the post.
McConnell will announce that the University of Glasgow has been awarded five Research Councils United Kingdom Academic Fellowships including one to study gravitational waves. ### Contact: Jill Perry (626) 395-3226 [email protected]
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