School of Physical Sciences Tyndall Lecture Prof. Martin Hendry

DCU were delighted to kick off the Institute of Physics Tyndall Lecture Series 2024, with 250 Transition Year students attending to hear “black hole hunter”, Prof. Martin Hendry, provide a whistlestop overview of the field of gravitational-wave astronomy. Our speaker wowed students with details of his role with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, including the first ever detection of gravitational waves, which happened as recently as 2017 and has since been recognised for its outstanding achievement via the Nobel Prize for Physics. 

Prof. Hendry detailed how, since this initial milestone, multiple detections of gravitational waves have been achieved, emanating from such exotic events as black hole and neutron star mergers. He engaged students with the huge technical challenge of detecting gravitational waves amidst an overwhelming background of noise, through some innovative group activities and introduced students to the characteristic “chirp” of a gravitational wave. 

As a proud member of the University of Glasgow, Prof. Hendry also highlighted the contribution of Belfast-man, William Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, to the development of physics. Students had lots of interesting questions for Prof. Hendry afterwards and took the opportunity to take selfies with the “black hole hunter”.