A movie of cosmic proportions.
Venue: Webster Hall, Room 11, College Ave., WSU, Pullman.
Time: Refreshments will be served at 6pm, along side Physics demonstrations, followed by movie screening at 6:30pm (run time: 87 minutes).
Cost: Free admission for all.
About the movie: Picture an ordinary workday where your job is to catch a ripple in the fabric of space and time. That is the world of COSMIC CODA, a documentary that spends time with the people behind one of the greatest experiments in modern science.
The story begins in 1985, when a young filmmaker with more curiosity than expertise starts following a group of physicists chasing gravitational waves, the faint ripples Einstein predicted but nobody had ever detected. Years later, the filmmaker comes back to the same lead scientist and finds a new generation of researchers working alongside him. What has the long wait done to the dream? And what does it feel like to give a career to a question this enormous?
Rather than focusing on the grand announcement, the film lingers on everything around it: the routines, the setbacks, the late-night doubts, and the quiet satisfaction of fixing a stubborn piece of equipment. It asks the questions you might be too embarrassed to ask. How do you construct an instrument capable of putting Einstein to the test? Is there a toolbox involved? What does a person actually do on a random Tuesday while probing the limits of the cosmos?
The technology has advanced enormously since the 1980s, yet the hopes, frustrations, and stubborn persistence of the researchers feel strikingly familiar. Behind a breakthrough that reshaped physics, the film finds ordinary people, funny, fallible, and driven.
Join us at WSU for the screening and a conversation with the director, Mary-Jane Doherty, and local gravitational wave scientists.
Parking: WSU’s Parking Key below lists parking options neighboring Webster Hall — the event venue:
