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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Legendary physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking died on March 14, and the news is already prompting stories about the inspiration he provided to scientists around the world. For Karan Jani, a postdoctoral research fellow with Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, it was Hawking's classic book A Brief History of Time that launched him on his own path to success in physics. Jani was part of the Georgia Tech LIGO Scientific Collaboration team that detected the first gravitational waves, an achievement that won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the LIGO founders. This link within the Quartz India story leads you to Jani's heartfelt recollection of the lunch he once shared with Hawking.