Welcome to the World Year of Physics

1. Welcome to the World Year of Physics “One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike -- and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” Fred Raab, LIGO Hanford Observatory

2. What is the “World Year” About? • Commemorates centennial of “annus mirabilis”, 1905, when Einstein launched a scientific revolution • UN Resolution cites the importance of physics to the health and welfare of the citizens of the world • US adopts “World Year” theme of “Einstein in the 21st Century” • LIGO embodies this theme and was asked to develop a showcase activity -> Einstein@Home Raab: Welcome to the World Year

3. What Happened in 1905? • Einstein, age 26, working at Swiss Patent Office in Bern, published a series of papers that: • Laid the foundation for the quantum theory of light • Ended a millenia-old debate on whether atoms were real • Introduced a theory of space and time, called relativity • Discovered the equivalence of matter and energy, enshrined in the world’s most famous equation, E=mc2. • These papers launched a revolution that led to most of 20th-century science and technology Raab: Welcome to the World Year

4. Effects of this revolution in our daily lives • We now understand: • The composition of matter, how chemicals bond together and how electricity flows in materials, so we can have modern pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics, materials, computers, the internet • How to convert matter to energy, so we can understand the workings of the sun, how the chemical elements came about and how to forge new ones; we have nuclear power, nuclear weapons and the promise of nuclear fusion energy sources • We have a theory of space and time that spans back towards the earliest moments of time and we understand how matter and energy warp space and time, so we can study our cosmic origins and, using the global positioning system, we can accurately navigate anywhere on earth to incredible accuracy Raab: Welcome to the World Year

5. What did Einstein do after 1905? • Perfected relativity, releasing The General Theory of Relativity in 1916. Gravity is explained as the effect of warping space and time. New field of cosmology begins. • Space warp from the Sun detected on May 29, 1919 by observation of the bending of starlight during a total solar eclipse. Einstein becomes Earth’s most famous human. • Einstein continued work in quantum theory, predicting with Bose the existence of a new form of matter, called bosons • Einstein abandoned Quantum Mechanics and spent the last 30 years of his life searching for a unified theory, that would merge quantum mechanics and relativity, thereby explaining the strange phenomena of quantum behavior and restoring determinacy – a theory of everything from the subatomic to the edge of the universe and the beginning of time • Einstein died, April 18, 1955 at age 76 Raab: Welcome to the World Year

6. Einstein in the 21st Century: a drama in three acts • Seeking gravitational waves • Space warps, caused by violent cataclysms, that travel at the speed of light • “Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony” known to exist but not directly detected as yet • LIGO and its cousins around the world will try to detect these for the first time and use them to study our universe where light cannot go; cornerstone for NASA and ESA missions in future decades • Searching for a “Theory of Everything” • 50 years after Einstein’s death, his reclusive search has become high fashion! More hidden dimensions? Multiple universes? ??? • Cosmology • How did we come to be? • What is the ultimate fate of our universe? Raab: Welcome to the World Year

7. Gravitational waves are ripples in space when it is stirred up by rapid motions of large concentrations of matter or energy Rendering of space stirred by two orbiting black holes: The Frontier of Relativity: Gravitational Waves Raab: Welcome to the World Year