Gravitational waves "Profielwerkstuk"

By me, Rowan Drost and Laura Wegbrands

In 2024 I and two of my friends spent most of our free time researching and writing an article about gravitational waves for our "profielwerkstuk", the article we wrote features my attempt at deducing the parameters of the merging binaries using a simpler approach than parameter estimation and the effectiveness of that method.

For our research we visited GEO600, talked to many experts such as the wondeful Tanja Hinderer (who was our main advisor) and even commissioned our own art from a family member for the thesis (you can see one of the resulting art works in the background!).

While the article features an introduction to the field of gravitational wave astronomy, it is a very complex field and if you don't have experience with astronomy or physics don't expect to fully understand it.

Overall I'm very proud of what we managed to accomplish, for a paper written by high school students it is quite impressive and thorough. In 2 years I will probably see it as an article of lower quality but for now it is the largest project I have ever undertaken and poured my soul in, for that reason I am incredibly proud of the entire thing and I definently recommend anyone to read it.