Kip Thorne
California Inst. Technology (Caltech) (Pasadena, California, Etats-Unis d'Amérique)
There is a "Warped side" to our universe, consisting of objects and phenomena that are made solely or largely from warped spacetime. Examples are black holes, singularities (inside black holes and in the big bang), and cosmic strings. Numerical-relativity simulations are revolutionizing our understanding of what COULD exist on our universe's Warped Side; and gravitational-wave observations (LIGO, VIRGO, LISA, ...) will reveal what phenomena actually DO exist on the Warped Side, and how they behave.
To detect the gravitational waves and extract their information, in the era of "Advanced LIGO" (ca. 2014 onward), we must use quantum nondemolition technology -- technology that circumvents the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle in 40 kilogram mirrors. As a byproduct, Advanced LIGO can be used to explore the quantum behavior of human-sized objects.
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris