LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves
- 1 October 1999
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Physics Today
- Vol. 52 (10) , 44-50
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.882861
Abstract
The idea of gravitational waves was already implicit in the 1905 special theory of relativity, with its finite limiting speed for information transfer. The explicit formulation for gravitational waves in general relativity was put forward by Einstein in 1916 and 1918. He showed that the acceleration of masses generates time‐dependent gravitational fields that propagate away from their sources at the speed of light as warpages of spacetime. Such a propagating warpage is called a gravitational wave.This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Discovery of a pulsar in a binary systemThe Astrophysical Journal, 1975