Using Stars to See Gravitational Waves

Now that gravitational waves are definitely a thing, it’s time to think about some of the crazy things we can figure out with them. In some cases we’re going to need a gravitational wave observatory - in fact, we've already built one. Get your own Space Time t­-shirt at Tweet at us! @pbsspacetime Email us! pbsspacetime [at] gmail [dot] com Comment on Reddit: Help translate our videos! Previous Episode: The Physics of Life (ft. It's Okay to be Smart & PBS Eons!) We are at the cusp of a golden age of gravitational wave astronomy. We’ve already talked about the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory–LIGO, and the first discovery of gravitational waves here. Those videos came out almost two years ago. A lot has happened since then. First, an update on LIGO. In its two and a half years of operation, LIGO has observed five certain black hole–black hole mergers. These events have been consistently surprising. Reinterpreting Low Frequency LIGO/Virgo Events as Magnified Stellar-Mass Black Holes at Cosmological Distances Broadhurst, Diego & Smoot (2018) On Stellar-Mass Black Hole Mergers in AGN Disks Detectable with LIGO McKernan et al. 2018 Stars as Resonant Absorbers of Gravitational Waves McKernan, Ford, Kocsis & Haiman Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Drew Rosen and Matt O'Dowd Produced by Rusty Ward Graphics by Grayson Blackmon Assistant Editing and Sound Design by Mike Petrow and Linda Huang Made by Kornhaber Brown (www.kornhaberbrown.com) Big Bang CoolAsCats David Nicklas Faisal Saud Anton Lifshits Joey Redner Fabrice Eap Quasar Tambe Barsbay Mayank M. Mehrota Mars Yentur Mark Rosenthal Dean Fuqua Roman Pinchuk ColeslawPurdie Hypernova Edmund Fokschaner Matthew O’Connor Eugene Lawson Barry Hatfield Martha Hunt Joseph Salomone Chuck Zegar Jordan Young Ratfeast John Hofmann Craig Peterson James Hughes Fabian Olesen Kris Fernet Jane Meyers James Flowers Greg Allen TJMadison Denys Ivanov Nick Virtue Alexey Eromenko Nicholas Rose Scott Gossett Mark Vasile Patrick Murray Sultan Alkhulaifi Alex Seto Michal-Peanut Karmi Erik Stein Kevin Warne JJ Bagnell J Rejc Avi Goldfinger John Pettit Florian Stinglmayr Benoit Pagé-Guitard Nathan Leniz Brandon Labonte David Crane Greg Weiss Brandon Cook Daniel Lyons