‘Gravitational waves detected 100 years after Albert Einstein’s prediction’

“Gravitational waves will let us listen to the music of the cosmos”.

The presence of Gravitational waves is a momentous discovery because this opens the universe to completely new investigations. “We’re getting a signal which arrives at Earth, and we can put it on a speaker, and we can hear these black holes go, ‘Whoop.’ There’s a very visceral connection to this observation”. But don’t underestimate these tiny waves.

But these small waves still stretch and compress space.

Where do they come from?

The readings were corroborated up by another LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington, which recorded the same interstellar “chirp” simultaneously, ruling out any other cause – a truck going down the highway, for instance. In this collison’s final fraction of a second, these waves were produced. Scientists said they hope to have a greatest hits compilation of the universe in a decade or so.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) technicians work on optics in this undated photo released by Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory. “The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy”, Hawking said.

Selim Shahriar, an electrical engineering and computer science professor, is also a LIGO member.

Each LIGO detector has two giant perpendicular arms more than 2 miles long.

“I think that [experimental evidence of gravitational-waves] will add to the number of students interested in [physics and astronomy]”. “It’s the simplest word. It is a really, really exciting time to be involved in gravitational physics”. Gravitational waves have been present in the universe since the Big Bang, and now it can all be traced back. Black holes were previously thought to be smaller than this, so this is another discovery.

This is the first time black holes have been directly detected. “If you see the same signal at the same time in both locations it is more likely real”. On what would be the unit of measuring the waves, he said they could be measured in terms of energy. Except instead of air or water or some other matter, gravitational waves move through a medium that permits everything in it – you, me, the Earth, the stars – to exist at all. In this case, it is from the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away.

WILL OCKENDEN: The discovery has also been celebrated by Australia’s new chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel.

Alabama scientists were instrumental to the confirmation of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity this week, sending the scientific community into a state of euphoria.

So what was Einstein’s prediction?

Kip Thorne, the Cal Tech physicist who co-founded LIGO and has been working on gravitational waves for more than half a century, said he kept the secret even from his wife until just a few days ago.

While scientists have previously been able to calculate gravitational waves, they had never before seen one directly. After months of verifying the data, scientists from LIGO, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology announced this discovery Thursday at a press conference in Washington, D.C.

A still image of the collision of two black holes, a tremendously powerful event detected for the first time ever by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. “There is so much to learn from gravitational waves in the coming years, and likely many surprises”.