Gravitation in Astrophysics: Cargèse 1986

With the discovery of pulsars, quasars, and galactic X-ray sources in the late 60's and early 70's, and the coincident expansion in the search for gravitational waves, rela­ tivistic gravity assumed an important place in the astrophysics of localized objects. Only by pushing Einstein's solar-system-tested general theory of relativity to the study of the extremes of gravitational collapse and its outcomes did it seem that one could explain these frontier astronomical phenomena. This conclusi...