Publisher's Synopsis
I was made aware of the subject of this book while attending the Caltech Alumni Seminar on 21 May 2016 on campus. I missed the Seminar lecture but the subject sounded so interesting I decided to write a book about it in order to learn more about the subject. On 14 September 2015 there was a collision of black holes. It has been speculated for some time that two black holes can collide. Once they came so close that they could not escape each other's gravity, they could merge to become one bigger black hole. Even when simulating this event on powerful computers, we could not fully understand it. However, we did know that a black hole merger would produce tremendous energy and send massive ripples through the space time fabric of the Universe. These ripples are called gravitational waves. We have known of galaxies in which two super-massive black holes have moved dangerously close to each other. Theoretical models predicted that these black holes would spiral toward each other until they would eventually collide. Gravitational waves have been a fundamental prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Detecting them provides an important test of our understanding of gravity. It also provides important new insights into the physics of black holes. Large instruments capable of detecting gravitational waves from outer space have been built in recent years. Even more powerful instruments are under construction.
