Black Holes: Their birth and violent interactions
Pablo Laguna (Penn State)
Einstein's theory of general relativity describes gravity using an
elegant but complicated set of equations. Simply put, General
Relativity is a description in which the effects of gravity acting on
an object are viewed as a journey through the valleys and canyons of
spacetime. Black holes are solutions to Einstein's equations. They
have captured the interest of scientists, the public of all ages and
backgrounds, and are the subject of movies, television and
books. Studying black holes is no longer an academic
exercise. Astronomers have found indirect evidence of their existence
from observations of the motion of and light from matter captured by
these objects. However, a direct detection has evaded us so far. The
ultimate proof would be observing distortions in the fabric of
spacetime from the dance of two black holes orbiting each other. Such
a detection is a formidable undertaking, requiring innovative
engineering, powerful data analysis tools and careful computational
modeling.
