Gravitational radiation - In celebration of Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis

Two of Einstein’s 1905 papers were on special theory of relativity. Although general relativity was to come a decade later, it was special relativity that was responsible for the existence of wave-like phenomena in gravitation. A hundred years after the discovery of special relativity we are poised to detect gravitational waves and the detection might as well come from another inevitable and exotic prediction of relativity, namely black holes. With interferometric gravitational wave detectors taking data at unprecedented sensitivity levels and bandwidth, we are entering a new century in which our view of the Universe might be revolutionized yet again with the opening of the gravitational window. The current generation of interferometric and resonant mass detectors are only the beginning of a new era during which the gravitational window could be observed by deploying pulars and microwave background radiation.