Detection of Gravitational Waves
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Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics, with an Afterword by Roy Kerr / Fulvio Melia
CRA C K I N G T H E E INSTEIN CODE @SZObWdWbgO\RbVS0W`bV]T0ZOQY6]ZS>VgaWQa eWbVO\/TbS`e]`RPg@]gS`` fulvio melia The University of Chicago Press chicago and london fulvio melia is a professor in the departments of physics and astronomy at the University of Arizona. He is the author of The Galactic Supermassive Black Hole; The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy; The Edge of Infinity; and Electrodynamics, and he is series editor of the book series Theoretical Astrophysics published by the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2009 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2009 Printed in the United States of America 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5 isbn-13: 978-0-226-51951-7 (cloth) isbn-10: 0-226-51951-1 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Melia, Fulvio. Cracking the Einstein code: relativity and the birth of black hole physics, with an afterword by Roy Kerr / Fulvio Melia. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-226-51951-7 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-226-51951-1 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Einstein field equations. 2. Kerr, R. P. (Roy P.). 3. Kerr black holes—Mathematical models. 4. Black holes (Astronomy)—Mathematical models. I. Title. qc173.6.m434 2009 530.11—dc22 2008044006 To natalina panaia and cesare melia, in loving memory CONTENTS preface ix 1 Einstein’s Code 1 2 Space and Time 5 3 Gravity 15 4 Four Pillars and a Prayer 24 5 An Unbreakable Code 39 6 Roy Kerr 54 7 The Kerr Solution 69 8 Black Hole 82 9 The Tower 100 10 New Zealand 105 11 Kerr in the Cosmos 111 12 Future Breakthrough 121 afterword 125 references 129 index 133 PREFACE Something quite remarkable arrived in my mail during the summer of 2004. -
Could Minkowski Have Discovered the Cause of Gravitation Before Einstein?
2 Could Minkowski have discovered the cause of gravitation before Einstein? Vesselin Petkov Abstract There are two reasons for asking such an apparently unanswer- able question. First, Max Born’s recollections of what Minkowski had told him about his research on the physical meaning of the Lorentz transformations and the fact that Minkowski had created the full-blown four-dimensional mathematical formalism of space- time physics before the end of 1907 (which could have been highly improbable if Minkowski had not been developing his own ideas), both indicate that Minkowski might have arrived at the notion of spacetime independently of Poincaré (who saw it as nothing more than a mathematical space) and at a deeper understanding of the basic ideas of special relativity (which Einstein merely postulated) independently of Einstein. So, had he lived longer, Minkowski might have employed successfully his program of regarding four- dimensional physics as spacetime geometry to gravitation as well. Moreover, Hilbert (Minkowski’s closest colleague and friend) had derived the equations of general relativity simultaneously with Ein- stein. Second, even if Einstein had arrived at what is today called Einstein’s general relativity before Minkowski, Minkowski would have certainly reformulated it in terms of his program of geometriz- ing physics and might have represented gravitation fully as the man- ifestation of the non-Euclidean geometry of spacetime (Einstein re- garded the geometrical representation of gravitation as pure math- ematics) exactly like he reformulated Einstein’s special relativity in terms of spacetime. 1 Introduction On January 12, 1909, only several months after his Cologne lecture Space and Time [1], at the age of 44 Hermann Minkowski untimely left this world. -
The Emergence of Gravitational Wave Science: 100 Years of Development of Mathematical Theory, Detectors, Numerical Algorithms, and Data Analysis Tools
BULLETIN (New Series) OF THE AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY Volume 53, Number 4, October 2016, Pages 513–554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/bull/1544 Article electronically published on August 2, 2016 THE EMERGENCE OF GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SCIENCE: 100 YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT OF MATHEMATICAL THEORY, DETECTORS, NUMERICAL ALGORITHMS, AND DATA ANALYSIS TOOLS MICHAEL HOLST, OLIVIER SARBACH, MANUEL TIGLIO, AND MICHELE VALLISNERI In memory of Sergio Dain Abstract. On September 14, 2015, the newly upgraded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) recorded a loud gravitational-wave (GW) signal, emitted a billion light-years away by a coalescing binary of two stellar-mass black holes. The detection was announced in February 2016, in time for the hundredth anniversary of Einstein’s prediction of GWs within the theory of general relativity (GR). The signal represents the first direct detec- tion of GWs, the first observation of a black-hole binary, and the first test of GR in its strong-field, high-velocity, nonlinear regime. In the remainder of its first observing run, LIGO observed two more signals from black-hole bina- ries, one moderately loud, another at the boundary of statistical significance. The detections mark the end of a decades-long quest and the beginning of GW astronomy: finally, we are able to probe the unseen, electromagnetically dark Universe by listening to it. In this article, we present a short historical overview of GW science: this young discipline combines GR, arguably the crowning achievement of classical physics, with record-setting, ultra-low-noise laser interferometry, and with some of the most powerful developments in the theory of differential geometry, partial differential equations, high-performance computation, numerical analysis, signal processing, statistical inference, and data science. -
A Brief History of Gravitational Waves
universe Review A Brief History of Gravitational Waves Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota 1, Salvador Galindo-Uribarri 1 and George F. Smoot 2,3,4,* 1 Department of Physics, National Institute for Nuclear Research, Km 36.5 Carretera Mexico-Toluca, Ocoyoacac, C.P. 52750 Mexico, Mexico; [email protected] (J.L.C.-C.); [email protected] (S.G.-U.) 2 Helmut and Ana Pao Sohmen Professor at Large, Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, 999077 Hong Kong, China 3 Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire APC-PCCP, Université Paris Diderot, 10 rue Alice Domon et Leonie Duquet, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France 4 Department of Physics and LBNL, University of California; MS Bldg 50-5505 LBNL, 1 Cyclotron Road Berkeley, 94720 CA, USA * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.:+1-510-486-5505 Academic Editors: Lorenzo Iorio and Elias C. Vagenas Received: 21 July 2016; Accepted: 2 September 2016; Published: 13 September 2016 Abstract: This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by Einstein in 1916, theoretical and experimental blunders, efforts towards their detection, and finally the subsequent successful discovery. Keywords: gravitational waves; General Relativity; LIGO; Einstein; strong-field gravity; binary black holes 1. Introduction Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in November 1915, led to the prediction of the existence of gravitational waves that would be so faint and their interaction with matter so weak that Einstein himself wondered if they could ever be discovered. -
Spacetime Warps and the Quantum World: Speculations About the Future∗
Spacetime Warps and the Quantum World: Speculations about the Future∗ Kip S. Thorne I’ve just been through an overwhelming birthday celebration. There are two dangers in such celebrations, my friend Jim Hartle tells me. The first is that your friends will embarrass you by exaggerating your achieve- ments. The second is that they won’t exaggerate. Fortunately, my friends exaggerated. To the extent that there are kernels of truth in their exaggerations, many of those kernels were planted by John Wheeler. John was my mentor in writing, mentoring, and research. He began as my Ph.D. thesis advisor at Princeton University nearly forty years ago and then became a close friend, a collaborator in writing two books, and a lifelong inspiration. My sixtieth birthday celebration reminds me so much of our celebration of Johnnie’s sixtieth, thirty years ago. As I look back on my four decades of life in physics, I’m struck by the enormous changes in our under- standing of the Universe. What further discoveries will the next four decades bring? Today I will speculate on some of the big discoveries in those fields of physics in which I’ve been working. My predictions may look silly in hindsight, 40 years hence. But I’ve never minded looking silly, and predictions can stimulate research. Imagine hordes of youths setting out to prove me wrong! I’ll begin by reminding you about the foundations for the fields in which I have been working. I work, in part, on the theory of general relativity. Relativity was the first twentieth-century revolution in our understanding of the laws that govern the universe, the laws of physics. -
Listening for Einstein's Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe
Listening for Einstein's Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe UNCW College Day, 2016 Dr. R. L. Herman, UNCW Mathematics & Statistics/Physics & Physical Oceanography October 29, 2016 https://cplberry.com/2016/02/11/gw150914/ Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 1/34 Outline February, 11, 2016: Scientists announce first detection of gravitational waves. Einstein was right! 1 Gravitation 2 General Relativity 3 Search for Gravitational Waves 4 Detection of GWs - LIGO 5 GWs Detected! Figure: Person of the Century. Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 2/34 Isaac Newton (1642-1727) In 1680s Newton sought to present derivation of Kepler's planetary laws of motion. Principia 1687. Took 18 months. Laws of Motion. Law of Gravitation. Space and time absolute. Figure: The Principia. Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 3/34 James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) - EM Waves Figure: Equations of Electricity and Magnetism. Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 4/34 Special Relativity - 1905 ... and then came A. Einstein! Annus mirabilis papers. Special Relativity. Inspired by Maxwell's Theory. Time dilation. Length contraction. Space and Time relative - Flat spacetime. Brownian motion. Photoelectric effect. E = mc2: Figure: Einstein (1879-1955) Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 5/34 General Relativity - 1915 Einstein generalized special relativity for Curved Spacetime. Einstein's Equation Gravity = Geometry Gµν = 8πGTµν: Mass tells space how to bend and space tell mass how to move. Predictions. Perihelion of Mercury. Bending of Light. Time dilation. Inspired by his "happiest thought." Gravitational Waves R. L. Herman Oct 29, 2016 6/34 The Equivalence Principle Bodies freely falling in a gravitational field all accelerate at the same rate. -
A Brief History of Gravitational Waves
Review A Brief History of Gravitational Waves Jorge L. Cervantes-Cota 1, Salvador Galindo-Uribarri 1 and George F. Smoot 2,3,4,* 1 Department of Physics, National Institute for Nuclear Research, Km 36.5 Carretera Mexico-Toluca, Ocoyoacac, Mexico State C.P.52750, Mexico; [email protected] (J.L.C.-C.); [email protected] (S.G.-U.) 2 Helmut and Ana Pao Sohmen Professor at Large, Institute for Advanced Study, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, 999077 Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. 3 Université Sorbonne Paris Cité, Laboratoire APC-PCCP, Université Paris Diderot, 10 rue Alice Domon et Leonie Duquet 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France. 4 Department of Physics and LBNL, University of California; MS Bldg 50-5505 LBNL, 1 Cyclotron Road Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.:+1-510-486-5505 Abstract: This review describes the discovery of gravitational waves. We recount the journey of predicting and finding those waves, since its beginning in the early twentieth century, their prediction by Einstein in 1916, theoretical and experimental blunders, efforts towards their detection, and finally the subsequent successful discovery. Keywords: gravitational waves; General Relativity; LIGO; Einstein; strong-field gravity; binary black holes 1. Introduction Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, published in November 1915, led to the prediction of the existence of gravitational waves that would be so faint and their interaction with matter so weak that Einstein himself wondered if they could ever be discovered. Even if they were detectable, Einstein also wondered if they would ever be useful enough for use in science. -
Complex Spacetimes and the Newman-Janis Trick Arxiv
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington Complex Spacetimes and the Newman-Janis Trick Deloshan Nawarajan VICTORIAUNIVERSITYOFWELLINGTON Te Whare Wananga¯ o te UpokooteIkaaM¯ aui¯ School of Mathematics and Statistics Te Kura Matai¯ Tatauranga arXiv:1601.03862v1 [gr-qc] 15 Jan 2016 A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mathematics. Victoria University of Wellington 2015 Abstract In this thesis, we explore the subject of complex spacetimes, in which the math- ematical theory of complex manifolds gets modified for application to General Relativity. We will also explore the mysterious Newman-Janis trick, which is an elementary and quite short method to obtain the Kerr black hole from the Schwarzschild black hole through the use of complex variables. This exposition will cover variations of the Newman-Janis trick, partial explanations, as well as original contributions. Acknowledgements I want to thank my supervisor Professor Matt Visser for many things, but three things in particular. First, I want to thank him for taking me on board as his research student and providing me with an opportunity, when it was not a trivial decision. I am forever grateful for that. I also want to thank Matt for his amazing support as a supervisor for this research project. This includes his time spent on this project, as well as teaching me on other current issues of theoretical physics and shaping my understanding of the Universe. I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor. -
Introduction to Regge and Wheeler “Stability of a Schwarzschild Singularity”
September 24, 2019 12:14 World Scientific Reprint - 10in x 7in 11643-main page 3 3 Introduction to Regge and Wheeler “Stability of a Schwarzschild Singularity” Kip S. Thorne Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 USA 1. Introduction The paper “Stability of a Schwarzschild Singularity” by Tullio Regge and John Archibald Wheeler1 was the pioneering formulation of the theory of weak (linearized) gravitational perturbations of black holes. This paper is remarkable because black holes were extremely poorly understood in 1957, when it was published, and the very name black hole would not be introduced into physics (by Wheeler) until eleven years later. Over the sixty years since the paper’s publication, it has been a foundation for an enormous edifice of ideas, insights, and quantitative results, including, for example: Proofs that black holes are stable against linear perturbations — both non-spinning • black holes (as treated in this paper) and spinning ones.1–4 Demonstrations that all vacuum perturbations of a black hole, except changes of its • mass and spin, get radiated away as gravitational waves, leaving behind a quiescent black hole described by the Schwarzschild metric (if non-spinning) or the Kerr metric (if spinning).5 This is a dynamical, evolutionary version of Wheeler’s 1970 aphorism “a black hole has no hair”; it explains how the “hair” gets lost. Formulations of the concept of quasinormal modes of a black hole with complex • eigenfrequencies,6 and extensive explorations of quasinormal-mode -
1 the Warped Science of Interstellar Jean
The Warped Science of Interstellar Jean-Pierre Luminet Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) UMR 7326 Centre de Physique Théorique de Marseille (CPT) UMR 7332 and Observatoire de Paris (LUTH) UMR 8102 France E-mail: [email protected] The science fiction film, Interstellar, tells the story of a team of astronauts searching a distant galaxy for habitable planets to colonize. Interstellar’s story draws heavily from contemporary science. The film makes reference to a range of topics, from established concepts such as fast-spinning black holes, accretion disks, tidal effects, and time dilation, to far more speculative ideas such as wormholes, time travel, additional space dimensions, and the theory of everything. The aim of this article is to decipher some of the scientific notions which support the framework of the movie. INTRODUCTION The science-fiction movie Interstellar (2014) tells the adventures of a group of explorers who use a wormhole to cross intergalactic distances and find potentially habitable exoplanets to colonize. Interstellar is a fiction, obeying its own rules of artistic license : the film director Christopher Nolan and the screenwriter, his brother Jonah, did not intended to put on the screens a documentary on astrophysics – they rather wanted to produce a blockbuster, and they succeeded pretty well on this point. However, for the scientific part, they have collaborated with the physicist Kip Thorne, a world-known specialist in general relativity and black hole theory. With such an advisor, the promotion of the movie insisted a lot on the scientific realism of the story, in particular on black hole images calculated by Kip Thorne and the team of visual effects company Double Negative. -
PHY390, the Kerr Metric and Black Holes
PHY390, The Kerr Metric and Black Holes James Lattimer Department of Physics & Astronomy 449 ESS Bldg. Stony Brook University April 1, 2021 Black Holes, Neutron Stars and Gravitational Radiation [email protected] James Lattimer PHY390, The Kerr Metric and Black Holes What Exactly is a Black Hole? Standard definition: A region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. I Where does the escape velocity equal the speed of light? r 2GMBH vesc = = c RSch This defines the Schwarzschild radius RSch to be 2GMBH M RSch = 2 ' 3 km c M I The event horizon marks the point of no return for any object. I A black hole is black because it absorbs everything incident on the event horizon and reflects nothing. I Black holes are hypothesized to form in three ways: I Gravitational collapse of a star I A high energy collision I Density fluctuations in the early universe I In general relativity, the black hole's mass is concentrated at the center in a singularity of infinite density. James Lattimer PHY390, The Kerr Metric and Black Holes John Michell and Black Holes The first reference is by the Anglican priest, John Michell (1724-1793), in a letter written to Henry Cavendish, of the Royal Society, in 1783. He reasoned, from observations of radiation pressure, that light, like mass, has inertia. If gravity affects light like its mass equivalent, light would be weakened. He argued that a Sun with 500 times its radius and the same density would be so massive that it's escape velocity would exceed light speed. -
Karl Popper's Enterprise Against the Logic of Quantum Mechanics
An Unpublished Debate Brought to Light: Karl Popper’s Enterprise against the Logic of Quantum Mechanics Flavio Del Santo Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Vienna and Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Austria and Basic Research Community for Physics (BRCP) Abstract Karl Popper published, in 1968, a paper that allegedly found a flaw in a very influential article of Birkhoff and von Neumann, which pioneered the field of “quantum logic”. Nevertheless, nobody rebutted Popper’s criticism in print for several years. This has been called in the historiographical literature an “unsolved historical issue”. Although Popper’s proposal turned out to be merely based on misinterpretations and was eventually abandoned by the author himself, this paper aims at providing a resolution to such historical open issues. I show that (i) Popper’s paper was just the tip of an iceberg of a much vaster campaign conducted by Popper against quantum logic (which encompassed several more unpublished papers that I retrieved); and (ii) that Popper’s paper stimulated a heated debate that remained however confined within private correspondence. 1. Introduction. In 1936, Garrett Birkhoff and John von Neumann published a paper aiming at discovering “what logical structure one may hope to find in physical theories which, unlike quantum mechanics, do not conform to classical logic” (Birkhoff and von Neumann, 1936). Such a paper marked the beginning of a novel approach to the axiomatization of quantum mechanics (QM). This approach describes physical systems in terms of “yes-no experiments” and aims at investigating fundamental features of theories through the analysis of the algebraic structures that are compatible with these experiments.