Allan Adams: What the discovery of gravitational waves means
Allan Adams: Was die Entdeckung der Gravitationswellen bedeutet
Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of fluid dynamics, quantum field theory and string theory. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
sehr weit entfernten Galaxie
einander immer schneller,
und verschmolzen.
in pure Energie um.
als alle Sterne zusammen
nicht in Form von Licht frei --
their energy in light.
von schwarzen Löchern.
into the fabric of space and time itself,
ins Raum-Zeit-Gefüge selbst abgegeben
in gravitational waves.
in Gravitationswellen.
of the timescale at work here.
zunächst zeitlich ein.
multicellular life.
Leben auf der Erde entstanden.
einiges hervorgebracht:
and even -- God save us -- the Internet.
Saurier, Menschen
sogar das Internet.
and Ronald Drever at Caltech --
und Ronald Drever vom Caltech --
for the gravitational waves
schwarze Löcher entstehen.
that they were brilliant nuts
erkannten sie als verrückte Genies,
decided to fund their crazy idea.
Foundation ihre Idee finanzierte.
Gravitationswellen-Observatorium.
Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
erheblich gesteigert werden,
a huge expansion in its accuracy,
enorm verbesserte.
in its detection ability.
letzten Testlauf gestartet
hartnäckige Probleme zu klären.
a few lingering details.
Inbetriebnahme des Detektors,
had gone live,
beiden kollidierenden schwarzen Löcher
from those colliding black holes
Nur zwei Momente in meinem Leben
There's two moments in my life
to my father when he was terminally ill.
meinem todkranken Vater.
of my career, basically.
die Früchte meines Lebenswerks.
it's no longer science fiction! (Laughs)
ist nicht länger Science-Fiction! (Lacht)
and collaborator, Scott Hughes,
und Kollege Scott Hughes,
Gravitationswellen aus schwarzen Löchern
gravitational waves from black holes
on observatories like LIGO,
wie LIGO messbaren Signale.
what I mean by a gravitational wave.
of general relativity
einen richtig albernen Tanz auf.
in their classes on general relativity.
it stretches and expands."
dehnen und stauchen."
they're preposterously weak.
on September 14 --
beim Auftreffen der Wellen
stretched and compressed
durchschnittlichen Menschen
the average person
dem Komma, gefolgt von einer 1.
the LIGO people were nuts.
LIGO-Mitarbeiter für verrückt.
long -- and that's already crazy --
Laser-Detektor, und das ist schon absurd,
the length of those detectors
of the radius of the nucleus
eines Atomkerns genau gemessen werden.
of his classic text on gravity,
Textes über Gravitation
ein Mitbegründer LIGOs,
for gravitational waves as follows:
to be surmounted
der Öffentlichkeit
of a broad lay public,
überwunden werden."
LIGO sei mehr ein Ohr als ein Auge.
acts like an ear
als die Dinge um uns herum:
than the things around you,
or a map of the things around you,
eine Karte von Dingen anfertigen,
Punkten kommende Licht
coming from different spots
von bis zu 15 Metern.
that can be up to 50 feet long.
ein Bild von Dingen zu fertigen,
impossible -- to make an image
to listen for features like pitch
nach bestimmten Eigenschaften
Rhythmus und Lautstärke,
dahinter zu schließen.
of gravitational waves.
Bilder von Objekten im All anfertigen.
of things out in the Universe.
of those waves,
der Wellen achten,
that those waves are telling.
are in the audio band.
im hörbaren Bereich.
into pressure waves and air, into sound,
in Schall umwandeln,
buchstäblich sprechen hören.
the Universe speaking to us.
kann uns etwa viel über die Kollision
just in this way,
of two black holes,
schon sehr lange beschäftigt.
an awful lot of time thinking about.
drehende Löcher, zirpen einfach: wupp!
are non-spinning,
sehr schnell, hört man dasselbe Zirpen
very rapidly, I have that same chirp,
imprinted on this waveform.
eingeprägt in die Wellenform.
nie vergessen werden --
going to live in my memory,
erkennt dies als Geräusch von --
that is the sound of --
mit je 30-facher Sonnenmasse,
each of about 30 solar masses,
in your blender.
was das bedeutet.
to think about what that means.
in the Universe,
die dichtesten Körper im All,
100 times per second
weil wir es gehört haben.
Bedeutung von LIGO.
zur Erforschung des Alls,
to observe the Universe
that we can't see --
-- nicht sehen.
Sterne in Supernovae explodieren.
stars explode in supernovae.
about the Universe from them.
viel über das All gelernt.
geschehen aber im Kern,
physics happens in the core,
thousands of kilometers
it's opaque to light.
da diese opak sind.
as if it were glass --
Eisen, als wäre es transparentes Glas.
to be able to explore
is obscured by its own afterglow.
eigenes Nachleuchten verdeckt wird.
bis zum Anfang zurückzublicken.
all the way back to the beginning.
im All Dinge existieren,
are things out there
gar keine Vorstellung haben.
indem wir zuhören.
discover by listening.
in that very first event,
gleich im ersten Anlauf Dinge,
members of the LIGO collaboration,
sagt zu diesem Thema:
addressing exactly that:
die schwarze Löcher hervorbringen,
which produce the black holes
that are old, from prehistoric times,
aus prähistorischen Zeiten.
sozusagen die Saurierknochen
the dinosaur bones
a whole nother angle
völlig anderen Blickwinkel
und letztlich auch darauf,
and in the end, of course,
großartige Detektoren baut
to build exquisite detectors
für neue Observatorien --
new observatories --
von Observatorien
than listening to the Big Bang itself?
als dem Urknall selbst zu lauschen?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Allan Adams - Theoretical physicistAllan Adams is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of fluid dynamics, quantum field theory and string theory.
Why you should listen
Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of fluid dynamics, quantum field theory and string theory. His research in theoretical physics focuses on string theory both as a model of quantum gravity and as a strong-coupling description of non-gravitational systems.
Like water, string theory enjoys many distinct phases in which the low-energy phenomena take qualitatively different forms. In its most familiar phases, string theory reduces to a perturbative theory of quantum gravity. These phases are useful for studying, for example, the resolution of singularities in classical gravity, or the set of possibilities for the geometry and fields of spacetime. Along these lines, Adams is particularly interested in microscopic quantization of flux vacua, and in the search for constraints on low-energy physics derived from consistency of the stringy UV completion.
In other phases, when the gravitational interactions become strong and a smooth spacetime geometry ceases to be a good approximation, a more convenient description of string theory may be given in terms of a weakly-coupled non-gravitational quantum field theory. Remarkably, these two descriptions—with and without gravity—appear to be completely equivalent, with one remaining weakly-coupled when its dual is strongly interacting. This equivalence, known as gauge-gravity duality, allows us to study strongly-coupled string and quantum field theories by studying perturbative features of their weakly-coupled duals. Gauge-gravity duals have already led to interesting predictions for the quark-gluon plasma studied at RHIC. A major focus of Adams's present research is to use such dualities to find weakly-coupled descriptions of strongly-interacting condensed matter systems which can be realized in the lab.Allan Adams | Speaker | TED.com