The Einstein Telescope: Europe's Future in Gravitational Wave Physics

The current generation of gravitational wave detectors, the LIGO telescopes in the U.S. and Virgo in Italy, successfully detected the first gravitational waves and led to a number of ground-breaking observations. Now Europe is preparing the next generation of telescopes, the Einstein Telescope. I will briefly introduce gravitational waves and their sources, summarize some of the results, and present the perspectives of the next generation. I will discuss the principal of detection, the current limitations, and the technological attempts to overcome these limitations.