Listen to the eerie sound of two black holes colliding

Physicists with the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced Thursday they were able to record the sound of those black holes colliding. A gravitational wave would be a ripple in the fabric of space and time. This detection therefore marks the beginning of a new field of astronony – gravitational-wave astronomy – offering us a new perspective on the Universe. Check out our new stories about gravity waves, along with some of our older coverage. It could even tell us about events further back in time, possibly as far back as the Big Bang, since gravitational waves are virtually unaffected by the substances they pass through. Although Einstein created the idea, he remained uncertain regarding the waves, though they have provided evidence for black holes, something he was uncomfortable with as he knew his theory was too inadequate to mathematically describe.

Einstein predicted the sound nearly exactly a century ago.

The scientific milestone was achieved using a pair of giant laser detectors in the United States, located in Louisiana and Washington state, capping a decades-long quest to find these waves. The phrase has been on everyone’s lips. It occurs during collision of black holes, explosion of stars or merging of neutron star and any extreme events that cause space time to warp, expand and contract.

About a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves but they have never been observed until now.

While talking about the findings of his scientists Reitze said that the gravitational waves stretched and compressed space around Earth “like Jell-O”. Discovery of these waves would help us improve our knowledge of the universe around us, as it would allow us to peek into areas that electromagnetic waves were unable to permeate. Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the universe. “The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy”, Hawking said.

“Pack 30 times the mass of the sun into that, then accelerate it to about half the speed of light”, and that is just for one black hole, Reitze said. “LIGO is the most precise measuring device ever built”.