Black Hole Collisions: The Extreme Side of Gravity

The LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors have ushered in a new era of gravitational-wave astronomy. The majority of the signals observed to date are consistent with gravitational waves emitted by the collision of two black holes, one of the most extreme spacetime events predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

In this lecture, Frans Pretorius will discuss the basics of black holes in general relativity and what happens when black holes collide. He will then explain how properties of colliding black holes can be inferred from the signals measured by LIGO and Virgo.