The Blues of Black Holes and Other Melodies of the Cosmos

Janna Levin set herself a difficult task — to explain to a curious reader who is not very knowledgeable in physics what black holes are (which, of course, everyone has heard about, but no more than that!) and gravitational waves, predicted in 1916 by A. Einstein. She spent many hours in conversations with scientists closely involved in the creation of the largest interferometers — devices capable of capturing the sounds of distant space. This book helps us understand how winding and complex the path was that eventually led to one of the greatest discoveries of recent times: the first experimental registration of gravitational waves by ground-based laser interferometers LIGO. The importance of this epoch-making event was immediately recognized by the global scientific community, and in 2017 the Nobel Committee awarded the physics prize to Barry Barish, Rainer Weiss, and Kip Thorne for their crucial contribution to the construction of the LIGO detector and the discovery of gravitational waves.