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| Boom. I was right bitches. |
A year ago last February, almost to the day, the Guardian predicted gravitational waves would be detected by 1 January 2017. Well, turns out they were right, even if their prediction was 10 months off (or scientists working on the effort cranked it into high gear and beat the prediction, however you want to look at it). However, they did give some insight to the phenomena. Where telescopes give us the ability to 'see' into space, detecting gravity waves is more akin to a different human sense, or being able to 'hear' things happening in space. Just another (exciting) tool for the toolkit.
Today, February 12, 2016, scientists from Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) have announced the detection, and first direct evidence of gravitational waves, postulated to be from the collision of two black holes a billion light years away. The discovery comes almost a century on the button since Einstein predicted them as part of his theory of general relativity.
The thinking is that whenever a mass accelerates, it gives off gravitational radiation, which is energy in a form that no one had even conceived of before Einstein. The accelerations of massive bodies cause waves that ripple across the cosmos at the speed of light, causing atoms to rise and fall like a bobber on a choppy lake. This displacement, however, is much smaller than the width of an atom, which is what makes it so difficult to detect. So chalk one up for science.
Further reading:
http://digg.com/2016/gravitational-waves-explainer
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/science/ligo-gravitational-waves-black-holes-einstein.html
http://www.wsj.com/articles/gravity-waves-detected-vindicating-einstein-1455207960
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2015/feb/12/the-hunt-for-gravitational-waves-could-be-nearing-success
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| Trippy (IMG SRC) |
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