Ripples in Spacetime : The Science of Gravitational Waves and What They Reveal About the Universe
Overview
On September 14, 2015, two black holes that had been spiralling together for over a billion years finally merged - and the ripple they sent through the fabric of spacetime arrived at a pair of detectors in Louisiana and Washington State. The signal lasted less than a fifth of a second. It was the most extraordinary thing humanity had ever detected.
Ripples in Spacetime tells the complete story of gravitational waves: from Einstein's 1916 prediction and his own doubts about it, through Joseph Weber's false dawns and the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar's indirect proof, to the extraordinary engineering of LIGO and the moment the universe finally spoke.
You'll discover:
- Why Einstein predicted gravitational waves - and then spent years trying to prove they didn't exist
- How LIGO measures a distance change one thousand times smaller than a proton
- What the chirp of GW150914 revealed about two black holes no one knew existed
- How the neutron star merger of 2017 forged gold and settled a decades-long debate
- Why the 2023 pulsar timing array detection opened an entirely new gravitational wave window
- What LISA, the Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer will find next
This is the story of a hundred-year scientific quest, a machine of almost impossible precision, and a universe far more violent - and far more audible - than anyone imagined.
Ripples in Spacetime is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand one of the greatest scientific achievements of the modern era.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9798195444709
- ISBN-10: 9798195444709
- Publisher: Independently Published
- Publish Date: May 2026
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.32 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.46 pounds
- Page Count: 148
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