PIRSA:17110047

Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves

APA

Weiss, R. (2017). Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/17110047

MLA

Weiss, Rainer. Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Nov. 30, 2017, https://pirsa.org/17110047

BibTex

          @misc{ scivideos_PIRSA:17110047,
            doi = {10.48660/17110047},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/17110047},
            author = {Weiss, Rainer},
            keywords = {Other Physics},
            language = {en},
            title = {Probing the Universe with Gravitational Waves},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics},
            year = {2017},
            month = {nov},
            note = {PIRSA:17110047 see, \url{https://scivideos.org/index.php/pirsa/17110047}}
          }
          

Rai Weiss Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Talk numberPIRSA:17110047
Source RepositoryPIRSA
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

The observations of gravitational waves from the mergers of compact binary sources opens a new way to learn about the universe as well as to test General Relativity in the limit of strong gravitational interactions – the dynamics of massive bodies traveling at relativistic speeds in a highly curved space-time. The lecture will describe some of the difficult history of gravitational waves proposed about 100 years ago.  The concepts used in the instruments and the methods for data analysis that enable the measurement of gravitational wave strains of 10-21 and smaller will be presented. The results derived from the measured waveforms, their relation to the Einstein field equations and the astrophysical implications are discussed. The talk will end with a vision for the future of gravitational wave astronomy.