Gravitational Wave Astronomy *

The subject of gravitational wave astronomy has had a certain amount of controversy associated with it, but it is developing fairly rapidly. Indeed certain aspects of the field have reached an exciting stage, although they have not produced any real astronomical data yet and may not do so for some time. In some ways there have been quite basic changes in the overall character of the field in the last year or two, and from an experimental point of view I think the field now looks much more promising than it did to many people a short time ago, when it began to be generally accepted that the experiments of Joseph Weber (1), which had stimulated the whole field, might not have been detecting gravitational waves.