Spectra 11: Super Special
The Spectra comic series follows Lucy Hene, a junior high school student, who becomes Spectra, a superhero with the powers of a laser. In this 11th issue of Spectra, Lucy and her Tesla Junior High classmates take a trip to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hanford, WA. During their visit, they learn how LIGO looks for gravitational waves to detect the signals of accelerating masses like supernovae and black holes.
However, due to an unforeseen event, the laser that senses the gravitational waves goes offline right before the birth of a supernova. Follow Lucy/Spectra as she doubles up to take on her biggest mission yet to save the day and collect data on gravitational waves from a rare exploding star.
In 2015, the LIGO facilities allowed scientists to observe gravitational waves produced by the merger of two black holes, which matched predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This issue of Spectra, developed in collaboration with LIGO, will help readers understand the science behind this groundbreaking discovery that received the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.
