Gravitational waves: exploring the dark side of the Universe

What if you could hear two black holes colliding? This is what happened for the first time ten years ago, when the LIGO Observatories detected the first gravitational-wave signal from the collision of two black holes. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time, generated by some of the most energetic astrophysical events in the Universe. Since then, in only ten years, gravitational-wave science has grown to be one of the most important new fields in astronomy. We’ll explore what we have learned about our universe since that first signal, how LIGO detects gravitational waves, and what the future holds for the field.

Speaker: Gabriele Vajente is the Deputy Head of System Science and Engineering of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech, a national laboratory devoted to the observation of gravitational-wave signals from astrophysical objects such as colliding black holes and neutron stars.