Andrews University professor and students part of Nobel Prize

BERRIEN SPRINGS, Mich.-  A new window to the universe, that’s how a physics professor at Andrews University, in Berrien Springs, explains the newly awarded 2017 Nobel Prize she collaborated on. The award was passed down early Wednesday morning.

Professor Tiffany Summerscales says she was one of the more than one thousand people who collaborated in this project called “LIGO.”

Summerscales says this new project has opened up many doors that will help us better understand the topic, “Gravitational waves give us a whole new way to look at the universe,” she says. “It’s a new way of doing astronomy and figuring out what’s out there and what it’s doing.”

Summerscales along with her 22 students played a role “LIGO.” “We primarily do data analysis we do testing and development of the computer codes that are used to sift through the data and try to find these gravitational wave signals.”

Summerscales says before we were limited in what we understand about our universe, but with this new project all that has changed.

“That’s changing our picture of the universe so when I teach, it will play a role in what I present to the students because it will have modified our understand of how the universe works,” says this professor.

This Nobel Prize is given to those who advance the understanding of the world. In this case it was given to three individuals who founded an experiment, which Professor Summerscales and students locally were a big part of.