Gravity's shadow : the search for gravitational waves /

Collins (sociology, Cardiff Univ., Wales) offers a history up to the present of the search for gravitational waves (GW). Joseph Weber initiated that effort at Maryland using multiton aluminum cylinders and showed outstanding ingenuity in their instrumentation. The very weakness of the predicted signals lead to a search for signals deeply buried in noise, a difficult procedure. Weber's publication of "evidence for the discovery of GW" led many other laboratories to try to reproduce his results. They could not, and the consensus was that no GW had been observed and that more powerful methods were needed for the search. That led to the development of aluminum bars cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero, work that has been superseded by the development of long-base laser interferometers and projected space-based longer interferometers. At 821 pages in small font, the book is long. The brilliance of the instrumentation of the very difficult experiments is not conveyed successfully. Much personal and political detail is provided on the passage from small-scale bar experiments to the large-scale interferometer experiments and the Caltech difficulties of going from research activities to building a large instrument. A sociological analysis is attempted, but there were no surprising results. ^BSumming Up: Not recommended. J. Richard emeritus, University of Maryland College Park