Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Scientific paper
2011-04-15
Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India, 2011, Vol. 39
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
The contents of this article were finalised few months ago. The discussion in the article pertains to the situation prevailing
Scientific paper
An enigmatic prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity is gravitational waves. With the observed decay in the orbit of the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar agreeing within a fraction of a percent with the theoretically computed decay from Einstein's theory, the existence of gravitational waves was firmly established. Currently there is a worldwide effort to detect gravitational waves with interferometric gravitational wave observatories or detectors and several such detectors have been built or being built. The initial detectors have reached their design sensitivities and now the effort is on to construct advanced detectors which are expected to detect gravitational waves from astrophysical sources. The era of gravitational wave astronomy has arrived. This article describes the worldwide effort which includes the effort on the Indian front - the IndIGO project -, the principle underlying interferometric detectors both on ground and in space, the principal noise sources that plague such detectors, the astrophysical sources of gravitational waves that one expects to detect by these detectors and some glimpse of the data analysis methods involved in extracting the very weak gravitational wave signals from detector noise.
No associations
LandOfFree
Gravitational wave astronomy - astronomy of the 21st century does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Gravitational wave astronomy - astronomy of the 21st century, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Gravitational wave astronomy - astronomy of the 21st century will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-8297