Wednesday 27 April 2016 

Speaker: Andreas Freise (Birmingham University)


Title: "Gravitational waves, from detection to astronomy" 

Abstract: Gravitational waves are a prediction from Einstein's theory of gravity: when very compact and massive objects such as black holes collide, they produce strong gravitational waves, but until recently we did not have an instrument sensitive enough to measure them. In September 2015 the LIGO detectors achieved the first detection of a gravitational wave and could estimate the parameters of the black holes that had produced the signal, a billion years ago in a galaxy far away. LIGO and other detectors will now be improved further to detect more signals from black holes and other elusive objects, kickstarting a new type of astronomy. I will give an overview of the LIGO detectors, a summary of the events around the first detection and present the next steps to turn our relatively new field of science into mainstream gravitational wave astronomy.