Conference: “Gravitational Waves and Binary Black Holes”

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, from 4:30 p.m. to 19 h
Grand Amphitheater Dumontet, Triolet campus
Free admission for all ages

Lecture on physics and mathematics by Thibault Damour, 2017 CNRS Gold Medalist, Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies.

Conference summary

Gravitational waves and black holes are two of the most innovative predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity. These two predictions appeared as soon as the theory was discovered in 1916. However, it took around fifty years of theoretical developments to begin to understand their physical significance, and a hundred years to confirm their existence in the real world. We will present the experimental and theoretical aspects of the recent detection, by the two American LIGO interferometers and the European Virgo interferometer, of gravitational waves emitted by the final orbits and merger of several binary black hole systems and, more recently, a binary neutron star system. These
tections provided the first direct evidence of the existence of both gravitational waves and black holes, and ushered in a new way of observing the Universe: gravitational wave astronomy.

Introduction of the speaker

Thibault Damour is a theoretical physicist, professor at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques, and winner of the 2017 CNRS Gold Medal. He is world-renowned for his groundbreaking work on black holes, pulsars, gravitational waves, and quantum cosmology.
Thibault Damour is the (co-)author of several books on physics, including:

• Conversations on the Multitude of the World with Jean-Claude Carrière Thibault Damour, Jean-Claude Carrière, Odile Jacob Pockets, 2014;
• If Einstein Were My Friend, Thibault Damour, Le Cherche-Midi Publishing, 2012, Champs Flammarion Publishing, 2016.

He is co-writer of the comic book. The Mystery of the Quantum World with Mathieu Burniat (Éditions Dargaud, 2016), winner of the literary prize “Is the root of words square?”This prize, initiated by a teacher at Jean Monnet High School in Montpellier, rewards a literary work that addresses mathematics. From a selection of five books combining mathematical content and literary quality, high school and college students vote for their favorite book.
The winner is traditionally presented during the Math Week, under the auspices of theIREM ( Research Institute), which is part of the DESciRE Teaching Support Service on the Triolet Campus. On this occasion, many high school students come to present their work before the winner is announced.