Natural Science, 2014, 6, 305-322 Published Online March 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ns http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ns.2014.65033 How to cite this paper: Iqbal, N. and Monga, S. (2014) Gravitational Waves: Present Status and Future Prospectus. Natural Science, 6, 305-322. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ns.2014.65033 Gravitational Waves: Present Status and Future Prospectus Naseer Iqbal * , Showkat Monga Department of Physics, University of Kashmir, Srinagar, India Email: * dni_phtr@kashmiruniversity.ac.in Received **** 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract Remarkable progress has been made during recent years on the development of gravitational wave detectors. The review describes the present status and future prospectus of the gravitational wave astronomy. The main theme is to review the prominent long baseline detectors in operation around the world and proposed baseline and space-borne interferometers. Looking to the future, the major upgrades to the ground based detectors and new planned detectors will be completed over the coming years, which will create a network of detectors with the significantly improved sensitivity required to detect gravitational waves. Beyond this, the concept and design of possible future “third generation” gravitational-wave detectors will be discussed. Sources such as coalesc- ing compact binary systems, neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries, stellar collapses and pul- sars are all possible candidates for detection. Keywords Gravitational Waves; General Relativity; Detectors; Electromagnetic Waves 1. Introduction Gravitational radiation is a central and exotic prediction of general theory relativity proposed by Einstein and its detection is a key test of integrity of his work. Study of gravitational waves is presently considered as one of the major challenges in theoretical physics and efforts are made to gather and analyze all kinds of related informa- tion about them. The first paper about the idea of gravitational waves was published by Laplace in 1776. After many attempts to develop a relativistic theory of gravity by various authors, Einstein proposed general theory of relativity. Soon after his proposal of theory, Einstein predicted that existence of gravitational waves and esti- mated its strength. * Corresponding author.