Profile: John Chertude

Your personal background.
I'm an senior electronics systems engineer for a Fort Worth, Texas defense contractor. I've been in this career since 1984. For one year, I attended Louisiana State University and had a close friend who worked in the low temperature lab with a Dr. Hamilton in the Physics Department. Their main objective and experiment was on the detection of gravity waves. Their detector consists of a large aluminum cylinder carefully mechanically and thermally isolated from the outside environment and held in a vacuum. The entire systej was cooled (taking several months) to only a fraction of a degree above absolute zero (Kelvin).

The system had a microwave accelerometer on each end of the cylinder. As I recall, the Air Force was funding the development of these accelerometers and they were capable of detecting motion as small as the radius of a carbon-12 atom, once the system was cooled enough to remove thermal noise. Theory being, any gravity wave passing through the cylinder would change its dimensions and therefore be detected.

I don't know what the current status of the LSU experiment is at this time. Does anyone know?

Thanks,

John
Your opinions about Einstein@Home
I think that projects such as the LIGO are man's attempt to see into the eye and mind of God. I am a hard core scientific type, but I am also a Christian. I want to contribute to these types of "big science" projects as I can because they are a way to perhaps help understand the true nature of the physical universe.

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TeamUniversity of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (Computer Labs)


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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant NSF-0200852 and by the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or the MPG.

Copyright © 2009 Bruce Allen for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration