Gravitational Waves: What's the Big Deal?

Cliff Burgess (Mc Master - Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

Gravitational waves were recently seen coming from the coalescence of two black holes a great distance away. This talk intends to convey three things: 1. why modern theories of forces always require the existence of waves; 2. why this requirement is partly driven by relativity (largely because of its requirement that nothing goes faster than light, which in turn is founded on the impossibility of being able to sends signals into one's own past); and 3. why seeing gravitational waves from black holes is likely to teach us much about the universe as a whole in addition to learning about the waves and black holes themselves.

Cette conférence s'adresse à tous, y compris les professeurs, les chercheurs et les étudiants des trois cycles. Le café est servi à partir de 11h30.