The detection of gravitational waves comes exactly a century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence in his General Theory of Relativity. The team made key upgrades to giant detectors which enabled them to capture the 1.3 billion-year-old “thud” from one of the waves – which finally proves the universe can be “heard”.
Advertisement
It took supercomputers to measure it, but what’s even more sublime is that Einstein conceived of this phenomenon 100 years ago and that the waves match his equation.
To get the unforgettable sound, the researchers working with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) scientific collaboration used light signals collected at their detectors in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, on September 14, 2015, and converted them into sound waves.
Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the universe. He predicted that there are extraordinarily faint ripples in space-time, the hard-to-fathom fourth dimension that combines time with the familiar up, down, left and right.
The discovery is expected to open up a whole new avenue for researchers to study the nature and history of the universe.
After decades of effort the scientists are able to detect the gravitational waves due to violent merging of two black holes in the deep space.
As per NASA, Gravitational waves are disturbances in space-time that travel at the speed of light.
“The discovery of gravitational waves is, I think, the most important breakthrough in modern science”, Szabolcs Marka told CNN in an interview Thursday. “It’s a confirmation that we know how gravity works in these very extreme conditions of colliding black holes”.
“For many reasons that’s huge. one it is kind of like the final lynch pen, sealing, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relatively”.
For now, Reitze says this discovery is as significant as any.
Advertisement
A user who said he was one of the 1,000 LIGO scientists who worked on the research said: “Great explanation!” Only an instrument like LIGO can accomplish this as it can measure distortions as small as a thousandth of a proton’s size. Gravitational waves have been present in the universe since the Big Bang, and now it can all be traced back.
