These ripples in the very fabric of the universe were hypothesized by Einstein a century ago. Now scientists have detected them for the third time in a year and a half – ushering in a new era in astrophysics.
It’s a lot of grains of sand, but numbers can get a whole lot bigger….
Tony Hisgett
Scientific advances – including the recent discovery of gravitational waves – force us to deal with numbers so extreme they’re virtually inconceivable.
The discovery of gravitational waves has ushered in a new era in astronomy and physics. Where will the next big discovery be made? There’s no reason for it not to be Africa.
A team effort: Dr David Reitze, of the LIGO Laboratory at Caltech, shows the merging of two black holes that led to the detection of gravitational waves.
REUTERS/Gary Cameron
The discovery of gravitational waves involved a team of more than 1,000 scientists from across the globe, including Australia. So how does such an international collaboration work?
It’s taken centuries for our understanding of gravity to evolve to where it is today, culminating in the discovery of gravitational waves, as predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago.
The long awaited discovery of gravitational waves has sent ripples through the scientific world. Here top experts respond to the historic announcement.
Extra, extra! The embargo’s lifted, read all about it.
Newspapers image via www.shutterstock.com.
It takes something as stupendous as the merger between two black holes to generate detectable gravitational waves. Here’s how such incredible cosmic objects form.
Computer simulation of two merging black holes producing gravitational waves.
Werner Benger.