Cosmic Catastrophes

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 conclusion continues to be true today.