When Albert Einstein forged the bedrock theory of modern physics 100 years ago, he had no computer – few homes even had telephones. Following major upgrades begun in 2010, LIGO re-opened as “Advanced LIGO” in September 2015 and detected its first gravitational waves within days. Currently, there are only two detectors one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana – which operate in tandem.
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Scientists said on Thursday they have detected the existence of gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity 100 years ago.
UT astronomy students watched the big announcement Thursday in class.
HAWKING HAILS DISCOVERY The discovery of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, could “revolutionise astronomy”, according to renowned United Kingdom physicist Stephen Hawking who congratulated scientists on their groundbreaking work. They pick up passing gravitational waves by measuring how space-time stretches and contracts – by as little as one ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton. In a news release, LIGO said “this collision of black holes had been predicted but never observed”. The collision that produced the detected waves occurred 1.3 billion years ago. Since them, scientists were trying to spot these waves, but they tasted success in finding proof about 60 years after the legend physicist’s death.
The eLISA Consortium believes that a spaceborne low-frequency gravitational wave observatory is the ideal tool to make progress in our understanding of the Universe. “Gravitational waves pass through everything, so the result traveled through the universe for that time before reaching Earth”, CNN states.
The two collided at half the speed of light.
“We have a completely new tool to study the universe and answer questions which were not answerable so far”, Stojkovic says.
The group fired lasers through L-shaped tunnels into space and the waves disturbed the light.
We will now be able to detect parts of the universe that were earlier hidden from us, and events that led to the creation of galaxies can also be studied.
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“The gravitational waves detected agree perfectly with predictions from Einstein’s theory of relativity”, said Kip Thorne, a co-founder of LIGO and a consultant for the 2014 movie “Interstellar“.
