Webcast: Gravitational waves give new window to cosmos

Posted by Harriet Kim Jarlett on 29 Aug 2017. Last updated 30 Aug 2017, 08.46.

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Tonight, find out how two black holes colliding helped change our understanding of the universe forever.

David Reitze, Executive Director for LIGO, will speak at CERN tonight, 29 August 2017 at 7.30pm (CEST), on what unique insights into the nature of gravity, matter, space, and time have been revealed by the discovery of gravitational waves.

On September 14, 2015, scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration using the LIGO detectors observed the collision and fusion of two black holes by directly measuring the gravitational waves emitted during their collision. This detection came almost exactly 100 years after Einstein predicted their existence in his revolutionary general theory of relativity, and 50 years after scientists began searching for them in earnest.

This discovery has had truly profound implications on physics and astronomy, as gravitational waves provide unique information on the most energetic astrophysical events –opening a new window onto the cosmos.