American physicist (born 1940)
Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American physicist at the California Institute of Technology who specializes in the cosmological implications of the general theory of relativity.
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Birth Name:
Kip Stephen Thorne
Alternative Names:
Kip Thorne
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K.S. Thorne
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Dr. Kip Thorne
From Wikidata (CC0)
[B]y reason of its faster and faster infall [the surface of the imploding star] moves away from the [distant] observer more and more rapidly. The light is shifted to the red. It becomes dimmer millisecond by millisecond, and in less than a second is too dark to see . . . [The star,] like the Cheshire cat, fades from view. One leaves behind only its grin, the other, only its gravitational attraction. Gravitational attraction, yes; light, no. No more than light do any particles emerge. Moreover, light and particles incident from outside ... [and] going down the black hole only add to its mass and increase its gravitational attraction.” Black hole was Wheeler’s new name. Within months it was adopted enthusiastically by relativity physicists, astrophysicists, and the general public, in East as well as West — with one exception: In France, where the phrase trou noir (black hole) has obscene connotations, there was resistance for several years.
The detector consists of four huge mirrors (40 kilograms, 34 centimeters in diameter) that hang from overhead supports at the ends of two perpendicular arms. The waves’ tendex lines stretch one arm while squeezing the other, and then squeeze the first while stretching the second, over and over and over again. The oscillating separation between mirrors is monitored with laser beams, by a technique called interferometry. Hence LIGO’s name: Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.
Matthew Choptuik, a postdoctoral student at the University of Texas, carried out a simulation on a supercomputer that he hoped would reveal new, unexpected features of the laws of physics; and he hit the jackpot. What he simulated was the implosion of a gravitational wave.47 When the imploding wave was weak, it imploded and then disbursed. When it was strong, the wave imploded and formed a black hole. When its strength was very precisely “tuned” to an intermediate strength, the wave created a sort of boiling in the shapes of space and time. The boiling produced outgoing gravitational waves with shorter and shorter wavelengths. It also left behind, at the end, an infinitesimally tiny naked singularity