Einstein's Gravity Waves: How Astronomers Proved Relativity's Key Prediction | Alex Filippenko

Einstein's Gravity Waves: How Astronomers Proved Relativity's Key Prediction

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Alex Filippenko is a Hertz Foundation Fellow and recipient of the prestigious Hertz Foundation Grant for graduate study in the applications of the physical, biological and engineering sciences. When the discovery of gravitational waves was announced in February 2016, Filippenko was awed. The researchers at LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) managed to prove a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity: his theory of gravity. Here, Filippenko explains the mind-boggling way they did it, and the scope of discoveries that this hyper-precise technology will reveal to us over the next decade. With the support of the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation, Filippenko pursued a PhD in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.
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ALEX FILIPPENKO :

Alex Filippenko is the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences. His accomplishments, documented in more than 800 research papers, have been recognized by several major prizes, including a share of both the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2007) and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2015). One of the world's most highly cited astronomers, he is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2009) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015). He has won the most prestigious teaching awards at UC Berkeley and has also been voted the "Best Professor" on campus a record 9 times. Selected in 2006 as the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions, he has also received the Richard H. Emmons Award for undergraduate teaching (2010). He produced five astronomy video courses with "The Great Courses" (see below), coauthored an award-winning astronomy textbook, and appears in more than 100 TV documentaries, including about 50 episodes of "The Universe" series. He has given nearly 1000 public lectures or other presentations, was awarded the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization, and received the prestigious Hertz Foundation fellowship for his PhD studies at The California Institute of Technology.

Filippenko is the only person who was a member of both the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-z Supernova Search Team, which used observations of extragalactic supernovae to discover the accelerating universe and its implied existence of dark energy. The discovery was voted the top science breakthrough of 1998 by Science magazine] and resulted in the 2011 Nobel prize for physics being awarded to the leaders of the two project teams.

Filippenko developed and runs the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (AIT), a fully robotic telescope which conducts the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS), the most successful nearby supernova search. He is also a member of the Nuker Team which uses the Hubble space telescope to examine supermassive black holes and determined the relationship between a galaxy's central black hole's mass and velocity dispersion.[3][4] The Thompson-Reuters "incites" index ranked Filippenko as the most cited researcher in space science for the ten-year period between 1996 and 2006
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TRANSCRIPT:

Alex Filippenko: One of the most exciting discoveries in all of science in the past year—and one in which there will be a lot of progress in the next five years—is the discovery of gravitational waves: ripples in the actual fabric of space time produced when, for example, two massive stars or black holes merge into one. 

LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, in September 2015 detected a signal, which, after months of processing, the scientists became convinced was the signature of two black holes merging together 1.3 billion light years away. Now this is absolutely magnificent, because it's a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity, his theory of gravity. 

It predicts that when two massive, especially dense objects merge together, the dimples that each of them individually form in the shape of space sort of form a spiral pattern that goes outward— a little bit like a water wave when you toss a ball onto a swimming pool. And that wave carries energy and it's extremely difficult to detect, but scientists last year detected it and announced that result, and I was just blown away. Two black holes each having a mass of about 30 times the mass of the sun merging together. It's just fantastic.

And a coupl...

[IlicSorrentino]

Einstein is always right... even when he's wrong. The best

[thenpguy]

Funny that I asked my physics teacher what would happen if two black holes collided the EXACT DAY that ligo confirmed gravitational waves!

[ryanmitchelcyr]

I have a Alex Filippenko's Autograph !!
Hi Alex!

[OneGeekStudios]

If it's a wave, then there probably is a way to ride it, right?

[rikross]

I love the thumbnail. Please make a poster out of that.

[LeonidasGGG]

Do gravitacional waves travel at the speed of light? Or are they faster?Since the Higgs boson told us that there are fields that elements interact with, does that interaction take a set amount of time to manifest is it instant? Because we had Inflaction before the expansion of light thru the Universe maybe this should be studied... (Probably is do).

[seanjoseph]

What progress will be made? Silver suits? Hover cars?

It's great science but we are too low tech to take advantage of it.

[thstroyur]

Like, OK; hype aside, gravitational waves are not _the_ key prediction of GR, and I hardly feel they should be considered a prediction at all, in the sense people talk about it, at least. They say, 'G-waves come from colliding BHs, and Einstein predicted it'; i) I don't know how he could, since GR solutions for two-bodies are *diabolical* and most certainly not analytical, and ii) it's not surprising that waves come out from GR: visualizing things in the flat covariant equivalent to GR, and fixing an 'Einstein gauge', we get wave equations--so that _any_ distribution of energy-momentum that wobbles would 'radiate', just like in the Maxwell theory, with multipoles and all that. What was blundered over here is the fact the waves are detectable only for large-scale processes, such as BH congealing.

[TheLuckymod]

Here's a fun thought: If gravity can propagate as a transverse wave (perpendicular to temporal causality), what is the medium through which it is traveling? XD

[soumenb]

I have gone through TTC video of Alex Fillipenko . since then fan of him

[malifestro]

Oh how I wish that Einstein was around in today time. To see what we can do with tools. It would be cool to see what more he could do with more time.

[Anamnesia]

I thought the nearest star was only ~8 light minutes away??? 😏

[UtkarshSrivastava]

Wrong title +bigthink...Gravity waves are entirely different from gravitational waves!

[tuyipato]

No one would allow him to speak at a funeral Lol #likeifyougetit

[audiakeny]

suppose you lit a lighter on a moving train instead of dropping a ball.. it burns straight up.. this constancy.. if energy follows relativity opposite to mass.. can't we retain energy and achieve anti gravity.. but how do you retain energy in a constancy.. sure bikes ride and planes fly.. but is anti gravity based upon electricity for instance..

[bionickchief]

we need another nikola tesla to bring us 200 years ahead

[pyrodays]

that's the face i make when i blank. jk. i mean no disrespect i love science! he clearly loves science to.

[ТенелбайМакытов]

+Big think and +Alex Filippenko, do not err!

Time flows the same, each has its own speed(level relativity), because everyone has different vision-see same flows time different.If happens different flows time, then happens extinction at present time to other(past or future) time.There are three types changes mass

m=h/(L*c)

h-changes mass with level relativity

c-changes mass with changes time

L-changes mass with without effect time.

Our events not in space, our events in ligth speed.If our events in space, when we look back then we must see our history how moves away from us.

There are filling space two types energy(emptiness but dense) and particle(density is filled number).

[OmniphonProductions]

What I really love is that Einstein's calculations were pivotal in the development of laser technology in the first place. Thus, in a way, Einstein contributed to the design of the very apparatus that ultimately proved his own prediction. How cool is that?

[MEMELOVER]

i got major respect for this man but he looks stoned XD