Recommended Reading, Video
Below are some videos and print items related to LIGO that we recommend to anyone interested in learning more about LIGO and its mission, or about gravitational waves in general.
Movies and videos -- general interest
- Gravity: Making Waves
- LIGO: A Passion for Understanding
- LIGO Generations
- The Invisible Colors of the Universe
- More educational videos
- Ripples on a cosmic sea: the search for gravitational waves (David Blair, Geoff McNamara, Perseus Publishing 1997). An early account of the development of gravitational wave detectors written by one of the pioneers. A great introductory read, even though it was published 18 years before LIGO's historic first detection.
- Einstein's Unfinished Symphony: The Story of a Gamble, Two Black Holes, and a New Age of Astronomy. (Marcia Bartusiak, Yale University Press). This updated version of Bartusiak's "Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time" recounts the long hunt for Einstein’s predicted gravitational waves—and celebrates their recent discovery.
- Gravity’s Kiss (Harry Collins; MIT Press). This book continues the work on gravitational waves that Harry Collins began with Gravity’s Ghost and Gravity’s Shadow. It is written at a very accessible level and serves as an insider account of the discovery of gravitational waves, from the very first email to the first published paper and the response of the public.
- Gravity’s Shadow (Harry Collins; University of Chicago Press)
- Gravity's Ghost and Big Dog: Scientific Disovery and Social Analysis in the Twenty-First Century (Harry Collins; University of Chicago Press)
- Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: Listening to the Sounds of Space-Time (Marcia Bartusiak; Berkley Books)
- Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy (Thorne; W. W. Norton & Company, Commonwealth Fund Book Program). Beautifully and accessibly written by LIGO's Kip Thorne.
- Traveling at the Speed of Thought: Einstein and the Quest for Gravitational Waves (Daniel Kennefick; Princeton University Press)
- The Science of Interstellar (Thorne; W. W. Norton & Company)
- LIGO: On the Front Lines of Space-Time
An APS-TV video by WebsEdge Education (General audiences)
- Gravitational wave astronomy -- opening a new window on the Universe
TEDxGlasgow talk by LSC member, Dr. Martin Hendry (General audiences)
- The Search for Gravitational Waves
New York University Colloquium by LIGO’s Prof. Alan Weinstein (General audiences)
- Caltech's Physics 237-2002: Gravitational Waves
A university-level web-based course organized and Designed by Kip S. Thorne, Mihai Bondarescu and Yanbei Chen (For those wanting to see some of the high-level math and physics of gravitational wave science)