The discovery confirms the existence of black holes and validates the final unproven piece of Einstein’s theory of relativity: that gravitational waves exist – ripples in the fabric of space and time.
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The announcement of detection of gravitational waves was made simultaneously at IUCAA, Pune, and by scientists in Washington DC, USA. As per the researchers, they have detected gravitational waves coming from two black holes. The two black holes that merged were both approximately 100 kilometers across, each containing at least 29 times the same mass as the earth’s sun.
British physicist Stephen Hawking says the detection of gravitational waves provides a completely new way of looking at the universe, and is at least as important as the detection of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. Louisiana State University physicist Gabriela Gonzale hailed the discovery during the conference as opening a new era in astronomy. This means that when a mass moves through the universe, it creates what can be referred to as “ripples” through space-time, better known as gravitational waves.
“For this binary black hole system, it made a distinctive, rising ‘whoooop!’ sound”, said one of the researchers Matthew Evans from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI). Well, once again, Einstein was right, proving that another one of the concepts in his General Theory is correct. So far, all the information the human race has gathered about the universe around us has come in the form of electromagnetic radiation, including light, heat and radio waves. Takaaki Kajita, a Nobel laureate in physics will search for the waves using Japan’s detector, called Kagra, in Gifu Prefecture. In a 1936 paper, Einstein wrote that the waves he predicted 20 years before were not possible.
The scientific landmark is now being compared to 400 years ago when Galileo turned his telescope to the moon for the first time. In 1916, Einstein proposed the existence of gravitational waves in his ground-breaking general theory of relativity.
Daniel Batcheldor, head of the Physics & Space Sciences at Florida Institute of Technology, said, “The (LIGO) instrument looks at the whole universe”.
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“We are fairly certain that we will find more and more signals”, Marka said.
