Abstract: 

 

The monumental measurement of gravity waves at LIGO has ushered in a new field of science with wide ranging implications, from Astrophysics and Cosmology to Nuclear Physics, Particle Physics and, of  course, General Relativity. However, our ability to extract information from the signal is bounded by our theoretical power. In this talk I will discuss how Effective Field Theory  techniques have been used to generate the highest precision analytic results for the signals generated by inspiraling binaries, emphasizing phenomenological benchmarks. I will also show how space-time geometry is actually encoded in gravitational S-matrix elements such that we may calculate forces between black holes with high precision using modern scattering amplitude techniques.