OMNIDIRECTIONAL GRAVITATIONAL RADIATION

Gravitational wave detection is certainly one of the most challenging goals for today's physics. For three decades detectors have improved in sensitivity in order to confirm the existence of these waves, which are predicted by general relativity and other theories of gravitation. Besides testing these theories themselves the detection of gravitational waves will open a new window to observe the Universe — gravitational astronomy — which will be responsible for a great number of the new discoveries in physics, astrophysics and cosmology, and major technological advances in the next millennium. The last generation of detectors is under study now, and it will probably consist of several antennas sensitive to all directions, forming an “omnidirectional gravitational radiation observatory”. This book is a compilation of the papers presented at a recent workshop for this kind of observatory. It includes original works from some of the most active physicists in the field, both experimentalists and theorists, and the present status of the different detectors around the world.