Kip Thorne: Creating Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

Bolzano Lecture of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic May 15, 2019, Prague Kip S. Thorne: Feynman professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, the world‘s leading expert on Einstein‘s general theory of relativity and its astrophysical implications, the Nobel laureate – with R. Weiss and B. Barish – in 2017 for “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves“ and the executive producer for the film Interstellar. - - Abstract: Four hundred years ago Galileo initiated modern electromagnetic astronomy by discovering the moons of Jupiter with a small optical telescope. Three years ago the LIGO collaboration initiated gravitational-wave astronomy by discovering gravitational waves from colliding black holes. Kip Thorne recounts a brief history of the fifty-year effort that led to LIGO’s success, including technological challenges, source-simulation challenges, and organizational challenges, and how they were surmounted. He describes a vision for the future of gravitational wave astronomy and some new challenges that must be surmounted in order to convert that vision into reality.