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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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The rich astronomy of gravitational radiation is being intensively prepared using sophisticated analytic calculations, massive numerical simulations, and incredibly sensitive experimental facilities. These different approaches must work closely together if we are to use gravitational waves to understand the universe. Already, before the first direct detections of gravitational waves, we understand much more than a decade ago about the fascinating dynamical geometry of black holes and about the physics of how gravitational radiation is generated. Meanwhile the technologies being developed for detection promise applications across the rest of physics. The detections that are expected in the next few years, using the LIGO system and then expanding it into a worldwide network of 5 or more large interferometers, will allow us to test general relativity in radical new ways and to explore the astrophysics of highly relativistic systems. In the longer term, a space-based detector like the super-sensitive LISA will survey the supermassive black hole population of the universe back to the epoch where galaxies were first forming, thereby identifying and studying the earliest discrete objects that have ever been observed in astronomy.
