In many respects, Barry Barish is the quintessential scientist: soft-spoken and modest, he is also completely dedicated to the pursuit of pure science. Barish is currently the Linde professor of physics at Caltech. He’s a leading expert on gravitational waves, and his leadership and advocacy to the National Science Foundation about the need for LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) played a key role in convincing the NSF to fund it. Barish was the principal investigator of LIGO in 1994, before becoming its director in 1997.

The pay-off of Barish’s effort and the NSF decision was huge: Last February, Barish and other scientists announced to the world that they had detected gravitational waves four months before, marking the first ever direct detection since Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916. The proof came via a chirping sound—played below in this interview—which was the sound-wave translation of the merger of two black holes more than a billion light years away.

Barish talks to STEM-Talk host Dawn Kernagis and co-host and IHMC Director Ken Ford about the history of Einstein’s theory and the science that later ensued to set up this significant discovery. He also talks about the scientists who made it happen.

Barish gave an IHMC lecture in 2009 entitled “Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: Sounds from the Distant Universe”

Here is a link to the LIGO press conference on the gravitational waves detection: https://cds.cern.ch/record/2131411

1:36: Audio of “the chirp” signaling the detection of a gravity wave emanating from two black holes merging one billion light years away.

2:57: Ford reads a five-star iTunes review from CCPABC: “Love the science-based discussions, which also includes the interviewers, who also know and understand science, a rarity amongst podcast hosts. Love the funny comments along the way. For example, “Stay curious my friends.” And “Walk into a Walmart to see epigenetics at work.” Outlines (show notes) are also helpful for those of us who want to listen to specific sections again for better understanding.”

3:37: Dawn recaps Barish’s career, calling him a “leading light in several areas of physics.”

4:04: In October 2002, Barish was nominated by President George W. Bush to serve on the National Science Board of the NSF. Ford was also on the board. “We immediately connected and worked on the NSB for six years,” Ford said.

5:15: Barish discusses his upbringing and initial interest in science. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, to parents who had not gone to college, Barish said, “I was probably a scientist before I knew it.” The first science question he asked his father was why ice cubes float on water. His father’s answer didn’t satisfy him. “His answers never satisfied me, which I think is kind of the scientific mind.”

6:36: Ford, Kernagis and Barish recall one of their first scientific questions on why the sky is blue.

7:20: Barish grew up around Hollywood, California. “The furthest horizon I could see was Caltech, and that is where I thought I would go to college.” He went to Berkeley instead because he could start mid-year there, and he immediately fell in love with it — and a young girl.

8:55: Barish started as an engineering student, but he liked neither his surveying course nor his engineering drafting course. “By default, I ended up in physics. It’s where I belonged because physics has been great for me.”

11:15: In 1905, Einstein discovered: E=mc^2; and the theory of special relativity: “These solved some long-standing problems in physics in no time at all.”

11:42: In 1915, Einstein came up with the theory of general relativity, which was an extension of the theory of special relativity that added accelerations instead of just velocities.

13:30: In Newton’s theory of gravity, there’s instantaneous action at a distance: When the apple falls, you see it immediately. When something happens in space (a star collapse...