They have helped to prove the existence of space distorting gravitational waves – first predicted 100-years ago by Albert Einstein, but never before seen until now.
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The discovery might be one of the major scientific discoveries in decades, just as important as Galileo and his telescope 400 years ago, Reitze said. 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.
“We will deepen technical cooperation and professional resources exchange with prominent research institutes such as MIT, in addition to attracting foreign specialists”, Li said.
Rainer Weiss, Professor of Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the new LIGO discovery was the first observation of gravitational waves themselves.
As the project awaits governmental approval, an astronomy observatory and a new lab occupying more than 10,000 square meters will be built on Fenghuang Mountain in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province.
For discovering the pulsar and indirectly confirming the existence of gravitational waves, the two were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. It will be like going from silent movies to talkies, they said.
The breakthrough discovery will give astrophysicists “new eyes” with which to observe the Universe.
On Thursday, scientists announced they’d discovered gravitational waves – ripples in space time.
The reason scientists have struggled to detect them for so long is because the ripples take so much time to reach us, and by the time they do they’re approximately one billionth of the diameter of an atom.
As the two black holes collided with each other, they distorted spacetime, generating a cycle of waves, strong enough for LIGO to detect 1.3 billion light-years away.
Gravitational waves experience no such barriers, meaning they offer additional information.
On September 14, the detectors picked up on the gravitational waves caused by two massive black holes colliding. We know from previous work that neutron stars, which turn into pulsars, can be binary, that they can be in pairs.
Weiss said the new discovery, has been accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters. “We have turned on a new sense”. This light can be in the visible part of the spectrum, just like the light we see with our eyes, or in wavelengths that are invisible to human eyes, for example in the microwave, x-ray, or infra-red. The waves also might provide insight into the mysterious nature of the very early universe.
The global team says the first detection of these gravitational waves will ultimately offer a window on the Big Bang.
Get excited! But don’t call them gravity waves.
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Gaby González, a physicist and spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, played a waveform at the National Press Club on Thursday morning that amounted to a little soundtrack for our universe.
