Brian Greene Joins Stephen Colbert to Discuss Gravitational Waves

The experiment used to detect gravitational waves enters the late night comedy spotlight on Wednesday night when Columbia University physicist and mathematician Brian Greene joins Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show.” The show begins at 11:35/10:35c on CBS.

Greene’s most recent appearance on “The Late Show” began with a short ride aboard the show’s Science Mobile and featured a celebration of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which turned 100 in 2015. After using a water bottle to showcase how gravity works and demonstrating the effects of spacetime with marbles, Colbert asked Greene to give him the Ph.D. version of what the general theory of relativity actually means.

Without missing a beat, Greene jumped right in.

“Spacetime is a four-dimensional Hausdorff differential manifold on which a metric tensor is imposed that solves the Einstein field equations and that metric tensor gives rise to geodesics and objects that are not experiencing any other force move along the geodesic described by the metric.”

Stephen Colbert’s assessment: “That’s the s**t right there!”

Watch Brian Greene’s most recent appearance:

Watch “The Late Show” tonight at 11:35/10:35c on CBS.