Gravitational Waves and Binary Black Holes (VO) - Colloque Wright 2018

Gravitational waves and black holes are two of the predictions generated by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. These appeared as early as 1916, shortly after the publication of the work of the great theoretician. But it took more than fifty years of theoretical development to identify them and nearly a hundred years of effort to confirm the existence of gravitational waves at the experimental level.

The recent discovery of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the United States, and by the Virgo interferometer in Italy, was the first direct evidence of the existence of black holes.

During this conference, Professor Thibault Damour will focus on this major scientific discovery and explain what allowed scientists to deduce that these waves were born from the interaction between two black holes.