An exciting time for gravitational wave astronomy

• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2016,（3）
• 页码范围: 187-189
• 页数: 3页
• 语种: 中文
• DOI: 10.1007/s11434-015-0977-7

摘要

This year marks the centenary of Einstein's general relativity (GR),a theory whose intrinsic mathematical beauty is only matched by its robustness.Over the past 100 years,GR has stood the challenges of numerous weak and strong field tests.One remaining crown jewel is the direct detection of gravitational waves (GW),or ripples of spacetime curvature.Aside from testing GR,modified gravity theories,and a host of related fundamental physics predictions/conjectures such as cosmic censorship and nohair theorems,such detections would also provide invaluable information about the structure and history of our universe and celestial objects within.By accident or design,significant strides in experimental capabilities are being achieved around this centenary,and right now appears to be an opportune time to offer a practitioner's perspective on the past,present and future of GW astronomy.The viewpoint expressed in this short piece is necessarily biased and limited by the author's own experiences,and we apologize for any omissions and refer readers to the recent suite of review papers [1-5] for more detailed discussions.