Rainer Weiss,
Professor Of Physics, MIT
September 26 , 4:30pm
Barus and Holley 166

"Einstein's 1918 Legacy - Gravitational Waves"

Lecture will be simulcast in:
  • Room 168
  • Barus Holley Lobby

Abstract
Einstein's remarkable year of 1905 gave us a new understanding of space and time, it also showed that matter was made up of atoms and, finally, established that light behaved both as waves and as particles. Less well known but equally profound is that the path to view gravitation in a different way than Newton's was laid. The full development took place in the years 1915 through 1918 and became known as the General Theory of Relativity. This theory replaced the Newtonian gravitational force with distortions induced in space and time by massive objects. Not only did the theory solve some known problems in gravitation but also it predicted new phenomena. One of these is time dependent distortions of space and time known as gravitational waves which are emitted by accelerated matter. Astrophysical sources of such waves and a worlwide effort to detect the waves on the Earth and in space will be discussed.
http://www.physics.brown.edu

http://www.physics2005.org/

There is limited seating!
Room 166 has 180 seats.
Room 168 has 150 seats.
The lobby will be standing room.