Scientists have for the first time found telltale ripples in the fabric of space and time, confirming one of Albert Einstein’s strangest, yet most elegant, predictions.
This discovery, announced Thursday, comes 100 years after Einstein first theorized gravitational waves. It will usher in a new age of research and discovery for physicists around the world.
Researchers working with the recently upgraded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — a set of two identical observatories located in Washington and Louisiana — revealed that they have directly seen the ripples in space-time, which are known as gravitational waves, created by two black holes that collided about 1.3 billion years ago.
Each black hole was 30 times the mass of the sun, researchers said.
“We have detected gravitational waves. We did it,” said David Reitze of Caltech, the executive director of LIGO, at a press conference in Washington, D.C..
The waves were detected on Sept. 14, 2015, scientists said. Since then, scientists have been evaluating their findings to make sure they were accurate.
“We’ve only seen warped space time when it’s very calm. We’ve never seen the ocean roiled in a storm with crashing waves,” said Kip Thorne, the co-founder of LIGO. “All of that changed on Sept. 14 2015.”
By Miriam Kramer, Mashable, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Feb. 12, 2016
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