Ripples in Spacetime: The Science of Gravitational Waves and What They Reveal About the Universe

On September 14, 2015, two black holes that had been spiralling together for over a billion years finally merged — and the ripple they sent through the fabric of spacetime arrived at a pair of detectors in Louisiana and Washington State. The signal lasted less than a fifth of a second. It was the most extraordinary thing humanity had ever detected.

Ripples in Spacetime tells the complete story of gravitational waves: from Einstein's 1916 prediction and his own doubts about it, through Joseph Weber's false dawns and the Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar's indirect proof, to the extraordinary engineering of LIGO and the moment the universe finally spoke.

You'll discover:

• Why Einstein predicted gravitational waves — and then spent years trying to prove they didn't exist
• How LIGO measures a distance change one thousand times smaller than a proton
• What the chirp of GW150914 revealed about two black holes no one knew existed
• How the neutron star merger of 2017 forged gold and settled a decades-long debate
• Why the 2023 pulsar timing array detection opened an entirely new gravitational wave window
• What LISA, the Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer will find next

This is the story of a hundred-year scientific quest, a machine of almost impossible precision, and a universe far more violent — and far more audible — than anyone imagined.

Ripples in Spacetime is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand one of the greatest scientific achievements of the modern era.