An alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences has been instrumental in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)’s third detection of gravitational waves, demonstrating that a new window onto astronomy is fully open.

Alex Nitz G’15, who earned a Ph.D. in physics, helped detect the signal on Jan. 4, 2017, using a software package he began developing at Syracuse. As was the case with LIGO’s first two detections, the wave in question came from the merger of two black holes, resulting in the formation of a single larger black hole.

Nitz is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover, Germany. From 2010-15, he was a member of Syracuse’s Gravitational-Wave Research Group, part of the worldwide LIGO Scientific Collaboration. Read more at SU News