Gravitational Waves: A New Ear to the Universe

The first detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO observatory in 2015 heralded a new era in astrophysics. In this talk, Nobel Laureate Takaaki Kajita will explain for a multidisciplinary audience why the study of gravitational waves and massive compact objects, such as black holes and neutron stars, is important, the science areas the detection opens, and the different ground-based techniques being used to detect them in the US, Europe, Japan and soon in India.