Hawking, who congratulated the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) team of scientists, added that we could “expect many more detections” following the “revolutionary” discovery.
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“The discovery will allow us explore space and time in a spectacular new way”, physicist Brian Greene told Mashable. During the final fraction of a second, the two black holes collide into each other at almost one-half the speed of light and form a single more massive black hole, converting a portion of the combined black holes’ mass to energy, according to Einstein’s formula E=mc2.
This file photo taken on March 13, 2012 shows an artist’s concept of a quasar, or feeding black hole.
The proof comes from two black holes which collided 1.3 billion years ago and created a burst of gravitational waves, stretching and compressing the fabric of space time.
Fred Raab knew back in the ’80s that he had to decide: look for these gravitational waves, or do something else with his life?
Such a discovery would represent a scientific landmark, opening the door to an entirely new way to observe the cosmos and unlock secrets about the early universe and mysterious objects like black holes and neutron stars.
So a big part of the excitement surrounding the discovery of gravitational waves is that they are a new tool that can be used to discover other things.
He added that even this very first detection could help scientists better understand how galaxies and stars evolve.
Reitze described how, on September 14 of previous year, a tiny blip of a signal was detected seven milliseconds apart by massive observatories in Louisiana and Washington. To date, we’d been able only to see their aftereffects – black holes themselves were a conjecture.
Scientists believe that gravitational waves can penetrate regions of space that electromagnetic waves cannot. “LIGO is the most precise measuring device ever built”. Some are calling it the most important breakthrough in modern science, something that Einstein predicted more than 100 years ago as part of his theory of relativity.
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“I think all of us are elated”, Larson said. This distortion is similar to how gravitational waves work. Accordingly, the signal LIGO received of the black hole merger was played on speakers to audiences of eager scientists. A laser beam is split and travels both arms, bouncing off mirrors to return to the arms’ intersection.
