Ratio presents: Gravitational waves

>>> Събитието ще се проведе на английски. The event will be held in English <<<

Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime produced by some of the most violent events in the cosmos: from colliding black holes and exploding stars to the Big Bang itself. In September 2015 the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration made the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves caused by the collision of two stellar-mass black holes more than a billion light-years away. It was observed by the twin LIGO laser interferometers in the US, the most sensitive scientific instruments ever built. 🔭

This ground-breaking discovery resulted in the award of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics, but it was just the beginning. As LIGO and Virgo have opened an entirely new window on the Universe, the number of gravitational-wave detections has swelled to 50 in just five years. The newly-published catalog of these events is driving exciting new discoveries in astrophysics, fundamental physics and cosmology – with the promise of many more detections to come in the next few years as the global network of ground-based detectors is made even more sensitive and expands to include the KAGRA and LIGO India detectors. 👨‍🔬

Come with us on an exciting journey with Martin Hendry as he takes us on a whistle-stop tour through the first five years of gravitational-wave astronomy, highlighting the impressive range of scientific discoveries to date, the remarkable technology that has made these discoveries possible, and the extremely bright future for this new field over the next decade.