Over and over in the history of astronomy, a new instrument finds things we never expected to see. Rainer Weiss More Quotes by Rainer Weiss More Quotes From Rainer Weiss That's much more modern and much more the way that physics gets done, you can't credit just the three of us for this. Rainer Weiss science The whole idea of gravity curling up space, that is the epitome of what is going on in a black hole. I would've loved to have seen Einstein's face if he were presented with the data that we actually discovered such a thing, because he himself probably didn't believe in much of it. Rainer Weiss face black space believe All at once, funding was gone due to the Mansfield Amendment, which was a reaction to the Vietnam War. In the minds of the local RLE administrators, research in gravitation and cosmology was not in the military's interest, and support was given to solid-state physics, which was deemed more relevant. Rainer Weiss support physics research war What was done is measure directly, with exquisitely sensitive instruments, gravitational waves predicted about 100 years ago by Albert Einstein. These waves are a new way to study the universe and are expected to have significant impact on astronomy and astrophysics in the years ahead. Rainer Weiss waves new universe way My parents were singularly uninterested in me. My father was too self-centered and too busy with his own practice to pay a lot of attention to me, and my mother was probably deflected more by my sister. Rainer Weiss parents me mother father I thought that there must be an easier way to explain how a gravitational wave interacts with matter: If one just looked at the most primitive thing of all, 3D floating masses out in space, and look at how the space between them changed because of the gravitational wave coming between them. Rainer Weiss look space matter way The waves travel with the velocity of light and slightly squeeze and stretch space transverse to the direction of their motion. The first waves we measured came from the collision of two black holes each about 30 times the mass of our sun. Rainer Weiss black light sun travel We've seen black holes, which is already wonderful. We also expect to see the merger of neutron stars, and that was a thing that actually gave this field a certain credibility when it was discovered that there were pairs of neutron stars in our galaxy, and people stopped laughing at us when that was found out. Rainer Weiss see black stars people Experimentally, we now have demonstrated that Einstein's theory is right in strong gravitational fields. That's important to a lot of people. Rainer Weiss now important strong people We knew about black holes in other ways, and we knew about neutron stars - well, those are the two things that ultimately got seen. Rainer Weiss things black stars two People say, 'I failed out of college! My life is over!' Well, it's not over. It depends on what you do with it. Rainer Weiss my-life you life people I wasn't unpopular. I didn't have any trouble getting girls. Rainer Weiss unpopular getting any trouble My father was a dictator in the true German sense. He suppressed my mother. Rainer Weiss sense true mother father The whole world tried to reproduce the Weber experiments. Rainer Weiss tried experiments whole world You know the Einstein waves can be thought of as a distortion of space and time. But the way we see it, we see it as a distortion of space. And space is enormously stiff. You can't squish it; you can't change its dimensions so easily. Rainer Weiss you space change time I prefer really often to talk to high school students, mostly because I think they're the future for us. Rainer Weiss think future high-school school For reasons probably related to the popular vision of Albert Einstein and, also, the threat posed by black holes in comic books and science fiction, our gravitational wave discoveries have had an amazing public impact. Rainer Weiss amazing vision black science We are all enormously indebted to the National Science Foundation of the United States and the American public for steady support over close to 50 years. Rainer Weiss american foundation support science We live in an epoch where rational reasoning associated with evidence isn't universally accepted and is, in fact, in jeopardy. That worries me a lot. Rainer Weiss fact live where me We know about black holes and neutron stars, but we hope there are other phenomena we can see because of the gravitational waves they emit. Rainer Weiss waves black stars hope
