Gravitational Waves: A Lecture by Professor Jess McIver

What can we learn from gravitational waves?

Gravitational waves, tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime, allow us to sense systems we can't usually see with telescopes, including distant black hole collisions and the interior of nearby exploding stars. These waves pass essentially unaffected through the Earth day or night, through heavy cloud cover, and across billions of light years of galaxies and dust, allowing us to make measurements anytime our detectors are operational. Where do these gravitational waves come from? How do we measure them? What can they teach us about the Universe that we can't learn with light alone?