Abstract

Gravitational waves, one of the more exotic predictions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, may, after 80 years of controversy over their existence, be detected within the next decade. Initially postulated by certain early relativists to be transformable away at the speed of thought - i.e. non existent!, the reality of gravitational waves is no longer in doubt. Indeed the evolution of the orbit of the binary pulsar, PSR 1913 +16, can only be explained if angular momentum and energy is carried away from this system by gravitational waves, and the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Hulse and Taylor for their experimental observations and subsequent interpretations of this system.

© 1996 IEEE