Abstract
Physics has known about and dealt with wave phenomena for a long time. In fact, Physics courses feature a variety of treatments of waves in fluids, electromagnetic waves, and related subjects. On very general grounds we may define a “wave” as a solution of a wave equation. This is not a mere tautology, but an accurate statement that includes many possibilities related to the Physics of wave phenomena. More specifically, a wave equation may contain a variety of terms, but two mandatory ingredients are the second time derivative and the second spatial derivative of some dynamical variable to be determined. Gravitational waves are a true revolution in the understanding of compact objects and gravity itself, a frontier opened a few years ago of high importance in the field.
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Horvath, J.E. (2022). Gravitational Waves. In: High-Energy Astrophysics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92159-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92159-0_10
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