April 14, 2006

Eanna Flanagan hunts down gravity waves -- ripples in 'spacetime' -- in quest to better understand the universe

By Thomas Oberst

Gravity is a familiar force. It's the reason for fear of heights. It holds the moon to the Earth, the Earth to the sun. It keeps beer from floating out of our glasses.

But how? Is the Earth sending secret messages to the moon?

Well, yes -- sort of.

Eanna Flanagan, Cornell associate professor of physics and astronomy, has devoted his life to understanding gravity since he was a student at University College Dublin in his native Ireland. Now, nearly two decades after leaving Ireland to study for his doctorate under the famous relativist Kip Thorne at the California Institute of Technology, his work focuses on predicting the size and shape of gravitational waves -- an elusive phenomenon forecast by Einstein's 1916 Theory of General Relativity but which have never been directly detected.

Full article here:

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April06/Flanagan.gravity.TO.html