Gravity's Kiss

The Detection of Gravitational Waves

Harry Collins

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9780262340052
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Science History

Scientists have been trying to confirm the existence of gravitational waves for fifty years. Then, in September 2015, came a "very interesting event" (as the cautious subject line in a physicist's email read) that proved to be the first detection of gravitational waves. In Gravity's Kiss, Harry Collins—who has been watching the science of gravitational wave detection for forty-three of those fifty years and has written three previous books about it—offers a final, fascinating account, written in real time, of the unfolding of one of the most remarkable scientific discoveries ever made.

Predicted by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, gravitational waves carry energy from the collision or explosion of stars. Dying binary stars, for example, rotate faster and faster around each other until they merge, emitting a burst of gravitational waves. It is only with the development of extraordinarily sensitive, highly sophisticated detectors that physicists can now confirm Einstein's prediction. This is the story that Collins tells.

Collins, a sociologist of science who has been embedded in the gravitational wave community since 1972, traces the detection, the analysis, the confirmation, and the public presentation and the reception of the discovery—from the first email to the final published paper and the response of professionals and the public. Collins shows that science today is collaborative, far-flung (with the physical location of the participants hardly mattering), and sometimes secretive, but still one of the few institutions that has integrity built into it.

Table of contents

• CoverImage
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1 The First Week: We Have Coherence
• 1 Notes
• 2 Reservations and Complications: Malicious Injections?
• 2 Notes
• 3 Half a Century of Gravitational Wave Detection
• 3 Notes
• 4 Weeks 2 and 3: The Freeze, Rumors
• 4 Notes
• 5 Week 4: The Box Is Opened
• 5 Notes
• 6 Week 5 to the End of October: Directness, Black Holes
• 6 Notes
• 7 November: Ripples, Beliefs, and Second Monday
• 7 Notes
• 8 November: Writing the Discovery Paper
• 8 Notes
• 9 December, Weeks 12-16: The Proof Regress, Relentless Professionalism, and the Third Event
• 9 Notes
• 10 January and February: The LVC-Wide Meetings and the Submission
• 10 Notes
• 11 The Last Ripples: From the Press Conferences to the American Physical Society and the Rest of the World
• 11 Notes
• 12 Changing Order: The Long Aha!
• 12 Notes
• 13 On the Nature of Science
• 13 Notes
• 14 The Book, the Author, the Community, and Expertise
• 14 Notes
• Postscript: The Beginning of Gravitational Wave Astronomy
• 15 Notes
• How the Book Was Written and Those Who Helped
• 16 Notes
• Sociological and Philosophical Notes
• 17 Notes
• Appendix 1: Procedure for Making a First Discovery
• Appendix 2: First Draft of the Discovery Paper without Author List or Bibliography
• Appendix 3: Rules for Author Lists
• References
• Index