From Thales To Gravitational Waves The Scientific Perspective

Science has its roots in human curiosity. It is the process of exploration and research that has led to a better understanding of our surroundings: Copernicus set the Earth in its right place in our models of the Universe, Charles Darwin elucidated the mechanism of the evolution of living species, and Albert Einstein brought out the intimate connection between energy, space, and time.This book provides a reliable guide to acquaint oneself with the scientific process. It explains in easy terms how scientific investigation has historically developed to reach our present understanding of the world around us. It also discusses the place of science in modern society in relation to culture and to the technological advances that it brings.

The remarkable story of how humankind discovered gravitational waves, chronicled with unparalleled historical and scientific vision. In 2016, the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations made headlines when they announced the detection of gravitational waves—a century after Albert Einstein first predicted their existence with his general theory of relativity. With unprecedented perspective as physicists at the forefront of this discovery, Mario Díaz, Gabriela González, and Jorge Pullin provide a comprehensive and accessible account of the quest to find gravitational waves, their controversial history, and the efforts that culminated with their detection and a Nobel Prize in Physics. The Sounds of the Cosmos vividly narrates contributions from the ancient Greeks through Einstein, in addition to the breakthroughs of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including the discovery of the Hulse-Taylor binary star system (the first of its kind ever observed) and the technology behind gravitational wave detectors. The authors' fusion of meticulous research and accessible prose makes this book an indispensable resource for the scientifically curious, lending astonishing new context to the revelation that we can “hear” the cosmos through gravitational waves. Written with exceptional historical and conceptual insight, this is a definitive and dazzling journey through “the eternal quest of humankind to understand the universe.”

This book describes detection techniques used to search for and analyze gravitational waves (GW). It covers the whole domain of GW science, starting from the theory and ending with the experimental techniques (both present and future) used to detect them. The theoretical sections of the book address the theory of general relativity and of GW, followed by the theory of GW detection. The various sources of GW are described as well as the methods used to analyse them and to extract their physical parameters. It includes an analysis of the consequences of GW observations in terms of astrophysics as well as a description of the different detectors that exist and that are planned for the future. With the recent announcement of GW detection and the first results from LISA Pathfinder, this book will allow non-specialists to understand the present status of the field and the future of gravitational wave science.

A spacetime appetizer -- Relatively speaking -- Einstein on trial -- Wave talk and bar fights -- The lives of stars -- Clockwork precision -- Laser quest -- The path to perfection -- Creation stories -- Cold case -- Gotcha -- Black magic -- Nanoscience -- Follow-up questions -- Space invaders -- Surf's up for Einstein wave astronomy

This book is to help post-graduate students to get into gravitational wave astronomy. We assume the knowledge of General Relativity theory, though we will concentrate on the physics and often omit mathematically strict derivations. We provide references to already existing literature where possible, this helps us to see a broad picture, skipping the details. The uniqueness of this book is in that it covers three frequency bands and three major world-wide efforts to detect gravitational waves. The LIGO and Virgo scientific collaboration has detected first gravitational waves and the merger of black holes become now almost a routine. We do expect many discoveries yet to come, especially in the joined gravitational and electromagnetic observations. LISA, the space-based gravitational wave observatory, will be launched around 2034 and will be able to detect thousands of GW sources in the milli-Hz band. Pulsar timing array observations have accumulated 20-years' worth of data and we expected detection of GWs in the nano-Hz band within the next decade. We describe the gravitational wave sources and data analysis techniques in each frequency band.

Gravitational waves (GWs) are a hot topic and promise to play a central role in astrophysics, cosmology, and theoretical physics. Technological developments have led us to the brink of their direct observation, which could become a reality in the coming years. The direct observation of GWs will open an entirely new field: GW astronomy. This is expe

Since Einstein first described them nearly a century ago, gravitational waves have been the subject of more sustained controversy than perhaps any other phenomenon in physics. These as yet undetected fluctuations in the shape of space-time were first predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity, but only now, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, are we on the brink of finally observing them. Daniel Kennefick's landmark book takes readers through the theoretical controversies and thorny debates that raged around the subject of gravitational waves after the publication of Einstein's theory. The previously untold story of how we arrived at a settled theory of gravitational waves includes a stellar cast from the front ranks of twentieth-century physics, including Richard Feynman, Hermann Bondi, John Wheeler, Kip Thorne, and Einstein himself, who on two occasions avowed that gravitational waves do not exist, changing his mind both times. The book derives its title from a famously skeptical comment made by Arthur Stanley Eddington in 1922--namely, that "gravitational waves propagate at the speed of thought." Kennefick uses the title metaphorically to contrast the individual brilliance of each of the physicists grappling with gravitational-wave theory against the frustratingly slow progression of the field as a whole. Accessibly written and impeccably researched, this book sheds new light on the trials and conflicts that have led to the extraordinary position in which we find ourselves today--poised to bring the story of gravitational waves full circle by directly confirming their existence for the very first time.