'LIGO: A Passion for Understanding' — The Minds Behind the Film

LIGO Observatory Vertex Area — A technician works on the vertex area of one of the two LIGO Observatory facilties. Image taken from "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding" video by Kai Staats.

(Image credit: Kai Staats)

Kai Staats is an entrepreneur, writer, filmmaker and now student at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cosmology Research Group, Cape Town, South Africa where he is working to earn his masters degree in applied mathematics. In his former life in corporate America, Kai was founder and CEO of a Linux OS and HPC systems company where his team helped researchers and scientists improve performance in supercomputing systems. He contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights

The hunt for gravitational waves is a frontier physics effort that relies on one of the most sensitive measuring instrument humankind has ever created — and with this effort's underlying goal of capturing some of the largest events in the universe, those in the field see inspiration as a core mission.

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About 380,000 years after the big bang, gravitational waves left an imprint in the cosmic microwave background radiation seen today. Researchers at BICEP2, a unique tool used to detect polarization in the cosmic microwave background caused by gravitational waves, recently announced they found evidence for the existence of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background radiation. Scientists worldwide celebrated this achievement as a great success, and proof that you could "do astrophysics" with gravitational waves. More-precise measurements will soon confirm this breakthrough in cosmology, revealing more about the universe shortly after the Big Bang. [Major Discovery: 'Smoking Gun' for Universe's Incredible Big Bang Expan sion Found]

The two, L-shaped, LIGO detectors — one located at Hanford, Wa and the other at Livingston, La., are not telescopes, but incredibly sensitive ''interferometers." Each arm of the "L" is 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) long, and they house two perpendicular halves of a split laser beam, along with the equipment to measure the phase difference (interference) between the two halves. If a gravitational wave shortens or lengthens either of the two laser arms, it will be out of phase when reflected back and reunited with its pair at its source. Only these detectors, among most sensitive measuring devices ever created, can register that phase shift, on the order of 1/10,000 the size of a proton, which holds information about the massive cosmic event that created it.

The gravitational waves detected by LIGO will most likely come from the coalescence of neutron stars and black holes . These astrophysical events occur very rarely, however — only once every 10 thousand years, per galaxy. These events may be taking place now in galaxies tens to hundreds of millions of light-years away, but by the time the associated space-time distortions reach Earth, they will be small and difficult to detect.

The LIGO detectors are part of the LIGO Laboratory, operated and managed by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). More than 200 people work in the LIGO Laboratory (at Caltech, MIT and both observatories), 900 people worldwide in the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and hundreds of colleagues in sister projects — all working to prepare for this new era in gravitational wave astronomy, to open a new window to the universe.

This is an unusual film in some respects, for it does not tell a complete story. I cut the interviews to provide only brief interludes as a reflection of the rapidly unfolding intensity at LIGO. I wanted to capture the palatable excitement for the final installation of the next-gen "Advanced LIGO" systems — newly developed control software — and for the many coming months of testing prior to first light. I was in awe that a project now in its second decade and still two or three years from detecting gravitational waves (which is not guaranteed!) could maintain such incredible individual, and shared, energy.

From the moment I arrived, I was made to feel welcome. I asked many questions for the film and for my own understanding, and no one rolled their eyes. No one complained that they did not have time. Rather, each of the scientists, researchers and engineers went out of his or her way to explain all that LIGO was designed to do and what it would mean, if it succeeds, to humanity's collective understanding of the universe.

Kai Staat's new film "LIGO: A Passion for Understanding" provides a snapshot of observatory life as scientists, engineers and technicians labor over some of the minutiae of the LIGO project during a two-week period. Interspersed are their thoughts on the astrophysics the project is investigating, and of collaborating on a common scientific goal. Their voices reveal passion and dedication focused on a remote and extremely difficult task. But, not one that is unattainable: Technology has progressed to a point where it is conceivable to make this absurdly tiny relative-length measurement, to approximately 1/10,000th the size of a proton. The technology stems from hundreds of people's efforts and several decades of basic research.

The stories of our group are not unique, but are being played out throughout our collaboration, at our sister lab in LIGO Livingston, La., where researchers are building an identical detector; at the GEO600 instrument in Germany, where they use squeezed light to improve the high-frequency response of their interferometer; and at each of the university sites that are home to LIGO scientists and engineers, where they might hone their codes to tease out from data ever fainter whispers of gravitational waves from spinning neutron stars.

We share a collective confidence that we have the detectors that will find gravitational waves at Earth, that this basic research is a valuable contribution to society, and that we are better off for the investment of time and resources in the enterprise. As we close in on the goal of completing the installation of Advanced LIGO interferometers at both LIGO Livingston and LIGO Hanford observatories, Kai has given us the opportunity to stop and reflect on the science — science we believe is nearly at hand.

The stereotype of a scientist in many people's minds is a gray-haired, slightly crazy old man writing on his blackboard. However, all kinds of people conduct modern science, young and old (we all start young and get older!) — men and women of all ethnicities, backgrounds and interests. The common thread is the passion for understanding, and that's why making this film with people doing science on-site was important to me. [12 Amazing Women Who Totally Rocked at Science ]

Science attracts great talent every year, but also loses a lot of great talent to other paths. We need all kinds of people doing all kinds of things — but I fear people sometimes choose other fields because they cannot see themselves in the stereotype of a scientist. I hope this film helps change that stereotype, and helps students in school and in college make a more informed choice for their careers.

I brought in close collaborators who are also very committed to education and outreach, Marco Cavaglia and Szabi Marka, who have been incredibly enthusiastic about this project. We reached out to Mike Landry at the LIGO Hanford Observatory, where he leads the installation of the detector, and he immediately came on board. And we approached David Reitze, director of the LIGO Laboratory, who not only liked the idea, but offered laboratory support to get things done rapidly.

I live and work in Mississippi, a state that ranks at the bottom, or near the bottom, of the 50 U.S. states in early education. In my state, you can count the number of high school teachers with physics degrees on one hand. How can the United States increase educational opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and ensure a leading role for this country in innovation and scientific research, if many states don't even have teachers for these subjects?

Big science can truly inspire diverse audiences and increase their interest in science and technology. The challenge is to find a way to explain to the public, especially young people, that "people like them" accomplish frontier scientific research and innovation, and that these breakthroughs can happen in their backyards. Doing that would attract more, and more-diverse, people into science. I believe "LIGO: A Passion for Understanding" does this very well.

Being part of a scientific collaboration is so different than working, say, in a for-profit company. In the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), we feel we belong to something special, that we're part of something much bigger than ourselves. More than 900 people now work in the LSC. With so many collaborators, we of course have disagreements from time to time, but we all work, always, toward the same goal. The film makes this very clear. I knew this about scientific research before, but watching the excitement of the people being interviewed in the film made me even more aware of it. Their excitement is contagious, and I hope it will show the public what being part of a scientific collaboration really means.

Then, one never knows — I don't remember who said it first, but outreach is like seeding a field — you need to spread many seeds because only a few will germinate. A film has the potential to reach many young people. If '"LIGO: A Passion for Understanding" will inspire just one of its spectators to blossom into a scientist, that alone would be worth all the time and effort spent in making this film.

My LSC colleagues and I discussed a film project time and again. Then one day we received an email from filmmaker Kai Staats. We reviewed his portfolio and immediately knew we had found our man! I helped Kai a bit during the production of the film, offering advice here and there — well, perhaps I drove him crazy from time to time — but working with Kai was an incredible experience. I learned a lot about filmmaking — and it really was fun.

I still recall that sensation of total bewilderment when, as a child on my grandparents' farm in Iowa, I looked up to the rich, night sky above the farm house, fields of corn and timber. As I caught my first glimpse of the rings of Saturn through a telescope I had constructed, it lifted up not just my mind, but my entire imagination. I am fortunate to have never lost that child-like sense of wonder, nor the physiological response when my mind makes a cognitive leap into a whole new paradigm.

As the former CEO of a Linux OS and supercomputing company, I spent 10 years at the U.S. Department of Energy laboratories and on the campuses of NASA and several universities. At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Fermi in particular, when my sales pitch or installation of an HPC system finished, I didn't want to leave. Secretly, I wanted someone to offer me a job — any job — so that I could remain there, working with some of the smartest, most creative people on the planet.

Three years ago I embraced my passion for learning once again, not as an HPC architect or as a business developer, but as a filmmaker. The camera has taken me around the world, from a robotics lab at NASA Ames to an astronomy camp in upstate New York; from the transit of Venus across the sun as seen from Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to the West Bank of Palestine; from Sutherland and the largest telescope in Africa to LIGO, the world's most advanced gravitational-wave observatory.

In my time at the LIGO site in Washington state, I realized that if high school and college students better understood the incredible challenge and ultimate reward of "big science," the United States would not suffer an attrition of those seeking a science education. Instead, learners would actively seek careers in science, and the country's society as a whole would become better acquainted with the intrinsic value of science exploration.

Personally, I believe most of the challenges the world faces, in every country on the planet, do find some level of resolution through education. Science education, more than any other type, gives people the vocabulary and method of thinking that enables them to communicate their questions about the world and what they have discovered. Science education grants people opportunity to replace dogma with tolerance, and fear with understanding.