Week 02.06.2025 – 08.06.2025

If a set of massive objects collide in space and the fragments disperse, possibly forming black holes, then this process will emit gravitational waves. Computing the detailed gravitational wave-form associated with this process is a complicated problem, not only due to the non-linearity of gravity but also due to the fact that during the collision and subsequent fragmentation the objects could undergo complicated non-gravitational interactions. Nevertheless the classical soft graviton theorem determines the power  law fall-off of the wave-form at late and early times, including logarithmic corrections,  in terms of only the momenta of the incoming and outgoing objects without any reference to what transpired during the collision. I shall explain the results, briefly outline the derivation of these results and discuss possible generalizations and applications.