The Warped Side of the Universe: Kip Thorne at Cardiff University

Professor Kip Thorne is a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. In this talk he discusses “My Romance with the Warped Side of the Universe: from Black Holes and Wormholes to Time Travel and Gravitational Waves“. Kip is a world-leading expert on the implications of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, from time travel to wormholes, and from black holes to gravitational waves. Until 2009 he was the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, but has since retired to take up a new career in writing, and collaborations between science and art. He was executive producer and scientific adviser on Interstellar, the 2014 blockbuster film. One of Kip’s key contributions was the visualisation of black holes and their surroundings, which contributed to the film winning an Oscar for “Best Visual Effects“. Kip explained the science in the film in his 2014 book The Science of Interstellar. His many other multimedia projects have cemented his reputation to be able to explain complex concepts in ways that everyone can understand. As one of the founders of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory), Kip was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for “decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish. The first detection of gravitational waves by LIGO (of which Cardiff University is a member) in 2015 confirmed a key part of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, and observations have continued to test one of science’s most famous theories.