Ripples on a Cosmic Sea: The Search for Gravitational Waves - Couverture souple

McNamara, Geoff; Blair, David

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1864485035 ISBN 13 : 9781864485035

Editeur : Allen & Unwin, 1997

Synopsis

Shortlisted, Historical and Critical Studies Prize, Western Australian Premier's Book Awards 1998 Most people live and work entirely oblivious to the fact that a myriad of ghostly ripples are passing through them all the time. Generated in the depths of space by colliding stars and black holes, exploding supernovas and the turmoil that lies in the hearts of quasars, these so-called gravitational waves are literally ripples in the fabric of space itself. Sweeping across the cosmos at the speed of light, they encode vital clues about the exotic systems that produced them. The existence of gravitational waves was predicted by Einstein eighty years ago, but scientists have yet to detect them in the laboratory, as the waves are almost inconceivably feeble in their physical effects. A typical gravitational waves from an exploding star will trigger a vibration on Earth no larger than that caused by a pin dropped on the other side of the planet. Now the race is on to build the first successful gravitational wave antenna, a device that will pick up gravitational waves as a radio antenna picks up radio waves. To meet this challenge, physicists and astronomers have

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

David Blair is Professor of Physics at the University of Western Australia and is one of the leading international authorities on gravitational waves. Geoffrey McNamara is a science journalist.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Allen & Unwin
• Date d'édition: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1864485035
• ISBN 13: 9781864485035
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 184
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible