It may inaugurate a new era of astronomy in which gravitational waves are tools for studying the most mysterious and exotic objects in the universe.
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Because gravitational waves are so hard to find top scientists at the LIGO sometimes inject a false signal into the system just to check if the team of 1000 scientists can work in harmony to verify the data.
The new discovery, accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a group of more than 1,000 scientists from universities around the United States as well as in 14 other countries.
Boffins hope, unlike using a traditional telescope, Gravitational Wave astronomy will now help us to understand some of the most violent events in the cosmos, including exploding stars, colliding black holes, perhaps even the Big Bang itself.
The user said they had explained the discovery of “ripples in the fabric of spacetime” to a pair of five-year-olds earlier that day.
“The description of this observation is beautifully described in the Einstein theory of general relativity formulated 100 years ago and comprises the first test of the theory in strong gravitation”, added Rainer Weiss, who had kicked off the LIGO project some three decades ago.
A new recording captures the moment a gravitational wave flew past Earth, proving long-held theories and potentially giving insights into the very deepest parts of the universe.
“Colliding black holes and gravitational waves are our first handsome examples”.
Reitze said one black hole had the mass of 29 suns; the other was the equivalent of 36 suns. Prominent scientists celebrated the discovery, noting its significance and the potential for further research.
“And when we hear the universe, we will learn about the secret life of black holes – their birth, their death, their marriage, their feeding”. But, if a gravitational wave happens to pass through at the same time, then it will distort spacetime, essentially stretching or compressing the length of one of the tunnels and changing the distance that one of the beams of light has to travel.
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Wang Junjie, an astrophysicist at the National Astronomical Observatories affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, “Besides the direct observation of the gravitational waves, the discovery has another two exciting aspects”.
