We just heard gravitational waves – now it’s time to listen to what they’re telling us.
On Thursday 11 February, LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave observatory, announced it had spotted its quarry for the first time ever. Gravitational waves, the undulations produced in space-time when massive objects move, had long been predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
The signal and others like it will provide the best laboratories yet to test Einstein’s insights. So far, relativity is holding up.
“There may come a time where we get to such strong gravitational fields that general relativity doesn’t work anymore,” says LIGO team member Nergis Mavalvala of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But we’re a long way from that now.”
Aside from relativity, though, finding gravitational waves opens the door on some of the most exotic objects in the universe, which are otherwise almost impossible to see.
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