Cardiff University celebrates 50 years of gravity research

Five decades of gravity research at Cardiff University are being celebrated with a scientific conference led by the institution’s current and former scientists.

The anniversary marks 50 years since Professor Bernard Schutz founded a gravitational physics research group at what was then University College, Cardiff, in 1974.

Now known as the Gravity Exploration Institute (GEI), it is one of the largest such groups in the world, playing a key role as part of the international team that detected the most powerful event ever observed in the Universe – the collision of two ancient black holes a billion light-years away – through the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015.

Since then, they have expanded their expertise to combine theoretical and experimental research teams focusing on detecting yet more cosmic gravitational waves and developing gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool.

A welcome address from Professor Mike Edmunds, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics and former president of the Royal Astronomical Society, will get the anniversary event underway, before plenary sessions explore key moments from the last five decades of scholarship.

The event also marks the retirement of Professor Bangalore Sathyaprakash after 28 years at Cardiff University.

Professor Sathyaprakash (Sathya) led the group between 1996 to 2014 and said: “Never ever in my wildest dreams had I imagined a career that would take me on a roller coaster ride assisted by gravity. Cardiff University and the STFC (Science and Technology Facilities Council) placed huge bets on us and I am so glad it paid off with historic discoveries in science that will reverberate for generations to come.”

The GEI’s research laid the foundations for how gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space and time, are detected, developing novel algorithms and software that have become standard search tools for detecting the elusive signals.

The GEI’s most recent expansion in experimental gravitational wave physics includes the creation of QUantum-Enhanced interferometry for Space-Time research (QUEST).

Housed in a brand-new, £1m bespoke laboratory in the School of Physics and Astronomy, the unique QUEST experiment will explore the nature of space-time and dark matter and look for signatures of primordial black holes.

Head of the Gravity Exploration Institute, Professor Stephen Fairhurst, said:  “It's amazing to think how far the field of gravitational wave physics and astronomy has developed even in the past decade. It's less than 10 years since we made the first gravitational wave observation, and now we are seeing several events each week, and designing new detectors that will be able to see gravitational waves from the edge of the universe.

“This conference is a wonderful way for us to celebrate all the ways in which current and former members of the Cardiff Gravity Group have contributed to the field of gravitational wave physics and astronomy over the past 50 years.”