Allan Adams: What the discovery of gravitational waves means
Allan Adams: Vad upptäckten av gravitationsvågor innebär
Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist working at the intersection of fluid dynamics, quantum field theory and string theory. Full bio
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tre gånger vår sols materia
sin energi i form av ljus.
their energy in light.
into the fabric of space and time itself,
i gravitationsvågor.
in gravitational waves.
för tidsskalan vi talar om.
of the timescale at work here.
flercelligt liv.
multicellular life.
dinosaurier, människor
and even -- God save us -- the Internet.
och Ronald Drever från Caltech -
and Ronald Drever at Caltech --
for the gravitational waves
that they were brilliant nuts
att de var geniala galningar
sig för att sponsra deras galna idé.
decided to fund their crazy idea.
som de döpte till LIGO:
Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
och uppnått högre noggrannhet,
a huge expansion in its accuracy,
in its detection ability.
på att upptäcka gravitationsvågor.
a few lingering details.
had gone live,
from those colliding black holes
från de kolliderande svarta hålen
som varit mer känslomässigt laddade.
There's two moments in my life
till min pappa som var döende.
to my father when he was terminally ill.
under min karriär.
of my career, basically.
det är inte science fiction längre!
it's no longer science fiction! (Laughs)
och samarbetspartner, Scott Hughes,
and collaborator, Scott Hughes,
från svarta hål,
gravitational waves from black holes
i observatorier som LIGO,
on observatories like LIGO,
vad jag menar med en gravitationsvåg.
what I mean by a gravitational wave.
of general relativity
att otaliga lärare i relativitetsteori
sina lektioner i allmän relativitetsteori.
in their classes on general relativity.
det töjs och expanderar."
it stretches and expands."
de är absurt svaga.
they're preposterously weak.
on September 14 --
den 14:e september -
blev uttöjda och expanderade
stretched and compressed
the average person
töjde de ut en medellång person
följt av 20 nollor
the LIGO people were nuts.
de som jobbade med LIGO var galna.
long -- and that's already crazy --
detektor - vilket i sig är galet -
the length of those detectors
en tusendels radie av kärnan
of the radius of the nucleus
of his classic text on gravity,
om gravitation,
till LIGO, Kip Thorne,
for gravitational waves as follows:
to be surmounted
of a broad lay public,
att övervinna alla hinder."
acts like an ear
att LIGO fungerar som ett öra
than the things around you,
eller karta av sakerna omkring dig,
or a map of the things around you,
från olika punkter i din omgivning.
coming from different spots
that can be up to 50 feet long.
som kan vara upp till 17 meter lång.
i praktiken omöjligt -
impossible -- to make an image
som du verkligen tycker om.
to listen for features like pitch
för att lyssna efter aspekter som tonhöjd
of gravitational waves.
of things out in the Universe.
för att göra enkla bilder
of those waves,
that those waves are telling.
inom det hörbara bandet.
are in the audio band.
till tryckvågor och luft, till ljud,
into pressure waves and air, into sound,
the Universe speaking to us.
universum tala till oss.
just in this way,
till gravitationen på det här sättet
mellan två svarta hål,
of two black holes,
lagt massor med tid på att fundera över.
an awful lot of time thinking about.
are non-spinning,
hör man ett enkelt pip: whoop!
very rapidly, I have that same chirp,
väldigt fort, hör vi samma pip,
imprinted on this waveform.
och ges av vågformen."
going to live in my memory,
that is the sound of --
så är det ljudet av...
each of about 30 solar masses,
jämförbar med din mixer."
in your blender.
to think about what that means.
och fundera över vad det innebär.
in the Universe,
som finns i universum,
100 gånger i sekunden
100 times per second
to observe the Universe
att observera universum på,
that we can't see --
som vi inte kan se -
stars explode in supernovae.
och blir supernovor.
om universum tack vare dem.
about the Universe from them.
intressant fysik händer i kärnan,
physics happens in the core,
bakom tusentals kilometer
thousands of kilometers
det är ogenomträngligt.
it's opaque to light.
som om det vore glas -
as if it were glass --
to be able to explore
is obscured by its own afterglow.
bakom sin egen efterglöd.
all the way back to the beginning.
hela vägen tillbaka till början.
att det finns saker där ute
are things out there
discover by listening.
genom att lyssna.
in that very first event,
att vid den första mätningen
nyckelmedlemmarna inom LIGO-samarbetet,
members of the LIGO collaboration,
addressing exactly that:
svarta hål som vi observerade
which produce the black holes
från förhistorisk tid,
that are old, from prehistoric times,
kan liknas vid dinosaurieben
the dinosaur bones
a whole nother angle
and in the end, of course,
hur vi kom till mitt i den här röran."
hur man bygger utsökta detektorer
to build exquisite detectors
new observatories --
och bygga nya observatorier -
than listening to the Big Bang itself?
än att lyssna på självaste Big Bang?
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