Abstract :

On 2016 February 11, the LIGO-Virgo scientific collaborations jointly announced the detection of gravitational-wave signals from the merger of two black holes in the distant Universe. The existence of these elusive ripples in the spacetime was predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago. At times, even Einstein doubted the existence of gravitational waves in nature and never imagined that they would ever be detected. This lecture will tell the story of the quest for the detection of gravitational waves, culminated in the recent discovery by the Advanced LIGO observatories. This has opened up a unique astronomical window to the Universe. Gravitational-wave observations will complement, corroborate and perhaps challenge our understanding of the Universe gained from other windows of astronomy.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Parameswaran Ajith is a faculty member at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR), Bangalore, where he leads the Astrophysical Relativity group. He did his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) and has held postdoctoral positions at the Albert Einstein Institute and California Institute of Technology before joining the faculty of ICTS-TIFR. He is a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.