The panel discussed how studying gravitational waves will push Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity-which originally predicted their existence nearly exactly a century ago-to its limits, while revolutionizing our understanding of the most violent events in the universe.
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The announcement was made by scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration at a news conference on Thursday in Washington. Physicists said the gravitational wave detected at 1651 GMT (2321 IST) on September 14 originated in the last fraction of a second before the fusion of two black holes somewhere in the southern sky, though they can’t say precisely where.
Researchers from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected these changes by observing their effect on laser beams traveling a long distance through vacuum.
Making the announcement at the National Press Club in Washington DC, laser physicist Professor David Reitze, from the University of Florida, said: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves”. These are the gravitational waves that LIGO observed. “Any signal they see in both detectors, at this strength, is coming from gravitational waves”.
“This detection from LIGO is one of the biggest physics discoveries of this century”, he said. “It would have been wonderful to watch Einstein’s face had we been able to tell him”, Rainer Weiss, an emeritus professor of physics at MIT who was part of the team that originally proposed building LIGO, said in a statement.
The LIGO observatories are funded by the National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the U.S. government. “We have been able to see and now we will be able to hear as well”.
As the waves spread out, they compress and stretch the very fabric of the universe.
The search for gravitational waves ran from 2002 to 2010, but the team did not find any confirmation of the phenomena.
“Historically, it’s been 100 years since they were predicted, and now perhaps we can confirm it, that’s awesome in its own right and what’s been involved in getting to that point”, Dr. Wiseman said.
Bose is now working with a team of USA and Indian scientists on a proposal to build an additional LIGO detector in India.
“They’re waves, like light or any other kind of electromagnetic radiation, except here what’s “waving” is space and time itself”, said NASA astrophysicist Ira Thorpe, with the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
“Now, gravitational wave astronomy will give us the ability to make many exciting new discoveries”.
Prior to the direct detection of gravitational waves, there was indirect evidence for their existence.
RIT President Bill Destler calls it “an historic day in science”, and said he’s thrilled their researchers play such an important role in the collaboration. He believed that cataclysmic events such as two black holes colliding would create the waves, which allow massive objects in space to become curved.
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Because of the small size of the displacement created by the ripple, says The Guardian.
