These are, in effect, ripples which travel through time whilst stretching and compressing space. I really believe that.
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Reitze said signals from gravitational waves are so weak that Einstein himself questioned whether a device sensitive enough could be developed to capture this phenomenon.
In the historic event, two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth, and each roughly 30 times the mass of the sun, merged into one; the black holes spiraled around each other ever faster as they got closer.
In all, the scientists’ game-changing discovery could allow researchers to have a more direct look into black holes, and even the elusive topics of dark matter and dark energy, the latter two of which are invisible for the most part. Elaborating on the roadmap, Professor Navdeep Goyal from PU’s Department of Physics said, “The scientific community has accepted the results produced by the instrumentation, for now”. This confirms a major prediction of Albert Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity and opens an unprecedented new window onto the cosmos.
“We will deepen technical cooperation and professional resources exchange with prominent research institutes such as MIT, in addition to attracting foreign specialists”, Sun Yat-sen University Astronomy and Space Science Institute Dean Li Miao told The Global Times publication.
The concept of black holes, created by the collapse of massive stars, colliding with such force that gravitational ripples are sent through the universe, is hard to grasp but wonderful to consider. “It’s like we’ve nearly been deaf to it forever”, said Jim O’Leary, of the Maryland Science Center.
How can a common man comprehend the nano impact of gravitational waves?
Studying gravitational waves will push Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity – which originally predicted their existence nearly exactly a century ago – to its limits, while revolutionising our understanding of the most violent events in the universe, according to researchers. The latest discovery from darkest space may lead to more complete explanations of everything.
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Both waves speed up at the same rate, a property which is caused by the increasingly fast rotation of the two black holes as they approach their imminent collision.
