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7:30 pm, Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Room 1013, Earth Sciences Bldg
2207 Main Mall, UBC

 

Gravitational Radiation is finally detected

William G. Unruh

University of British Columbia

In Sept 2015 the 2 LIGO observatories observed gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral and collision of two black holes, each of roughly 30 solar mass, occurring 1.3 billion yrs ago at a distance of 1.3 billion light years. The energy output during this event was colossal, roughly equivalent to that of all stars in the universe during the same period. My talk will discuss this event, explaining what gravitational radiation is, how it is formed, and how it was measured by LIGO. The talk is for the general public - no knowledge of gravity, or of lasers, is assumed.

For more about the LIGO discovery, go to this resource document.

To learn more about the speaker, please visit his Wikipedia webpage.

This lecture is one of the PITP's special public events to celebrate the Centenary of General Relativity. You can find the resource material here.

Additional resources for this talk: slides, introductionand video.