A bare-basic understanding of the GTR tells us that the motion of black-hole size masses creates ripples, or gravitational waves, in the stiff fabric of space-time. Scientists (who have published a paper) were able to detect gravitational waves cause by two merging black holes, over one billion light years away.
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Einstein theorized that “space and time are interwoven into something called “spacetime” – adding a fourth dimension to our concept of the Universe, in addition to our 3D perception of it”, according to a report in The Times of Israel. At the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory), intense laser beams are passed through two perpendicular, 4 km long, vacuum tubes and light reflected off mirrors at each end is analyzed. As the only member from mainland China in LIGO scientific collaboration (LSC), Cao’s group focused on gravitational wave data analysis using advanced computing technologies to help “purify” the received signals.
Some physicists said the finding is as big a deal as the 2012 discovery of the subatomic Higgs boson, known as the “God particle”.
Teukolsky says the discovery shows just how extraordinary the natural world can be. On Thursday, the observation that a pair of spinning black holes had thrown off gravitational waves proved that was Einstein right once again, a century after he introduced general relativity. Physicists, employing state-of-the-art technology that can detect infinitesimally small waves or sounds, believe they have confirmed the legendary scientist’s predictions.
“I was in the LIGO control room the night before for the final detector tuning”, he said. “We did it”, David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO, said at the National Press Club in Washington, as quoted by CNN.
“They’re really hard to detect, so for our instruments to be able to see them, it has to be some hugely catastrophic event like a huge star exploding or in this case two black holes merging”, Kremer explained.
One of the black holes had the mass of 29 suns, while the other one had a mass the equivalent of 36 suns. If the fabric of spacetime is flexible enough that it can be altered by large planetary bodies, then, the theory went, alterations in the fabric should also ripple outward. More than 1,000 scientists in 15 countries played a role in the discovery, a tribute to global cooperation at the highest level of science. “It’s a whole new sense”, Evans said. Many scientists have predicted that this discovery is nearly guaranteed to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016.
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“Computer theorists produced a library of different kinds of signals you can expect if you change the mass and the spin of the objects involved”, said Avi Loeb, an astrophysicist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research.
