WAVES OF THE FUTURE piques our imagination with an elusive phenomenon called gravity waves. Like the ripples caused by a sotrn tossed into a lake, these are ripples in the fabric of time and space, caused by exploding stars and other violent cosmic events. When they can finally be measured, many scientists think they may provide a key to unlock critical secrets of the universe.
Two scientists in particular, one American and a Soviet, are leading our understanding of gravity wavges. We visit Leonid Grishchuk of Moscow's Sternberg Astronomical Institute, a passionate and poetic man who has been obsessed for 20 years with Einstein's unproven prediction.
We follow him to an observatory nestled in the Caucasus Mountains, which Soviet scientists hope one day will be the site of a gravity wave detector. And with him we also visit the brilliant Cambridge scientists Stephen Hawking to discuss ideas that may guide astronomers in the 21st century.
WAVES OF TEH FUTURE is also a story of teh friendship among colleagues on the leading edge. Long before the thawing of teh Cold War, Grishchuk and Caltech's Kip Thorne were pursuing a collaboration, which continues as Caltech builds prototype lasers to detect the presence of gravity waves.
In the meantime, we see how the inventive mind of Kip Thorne continues to produce the kind of creative thinking that has made him one of the most admired thinkers in astronomy.