LIGO, gravitational waves, and general relativity

LIGO has detected gravitational waves from the coalescences of six binary black hole mergers and one binary neutron star merger. These systems provide unique insights into general relativity in the strong field regime. Recent results include important consistency tests, measurements of the speed of gravitational waves, the Hubble constant, and the number of spacetime dimensions, and first estimates of the mass and spin distributions of black holes in the Universe. We discuss these results, and expectations for the near future of gravitational-wave physics.

Speaker: Daniel Holtz, Univ. of Chicago