Gravitational Waves Discovered from Colliding Black HolesThe LIGO experiment has confirmed Albert Ei
Gravitational Waves Discovered from Colliding Black HolesThe LIGO experiment has confirmed Albert Einstein’s prediction of ripples in spacetime and promises to open a new era of astrophysicsAbout 1.3 billion years ago two black holes swirled closer and closer together until they crashed in a furious bang. Each black hole packed roughly 30 times the mass of our sun into a minute volume, and their head-on impact came as the two were approaching the speed of light. The staggering strength of the merger gave rise to a new black hole and created a gravitational field so strong that it distorted spacetime in waves that spread throughout space with a power about 50 times stronger than that of all the shining stars and galaxies in the observable universe. Such events are, incredibly, thought to be common in space, but this collision was the first of its kind ever detected and its waves the first ever seen. Scientists with the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced on Thursday at a much-anticipated press conference in Washington, D.C. that the more than half-century search for gravitational waves has finally succeeded.Albert Einstein first predicted gravitational waves in 1916 based on his general theory of relativity, but even he waffled about whether or not they truly exist. Scientists began seeking these ripples in spacetime in the 1960s but none succeeded in measuring their effects on Earth until now. The discovery is not just proof of gravitational waves, but the strongest confirmation yet for the existence of black holes. “We think black holes exist out there. We have very strong evidence they do but we don’t have direct evidence,” Lehner says. “Everything is indirect. Given that black holes themselves cannot give any signal other than gravitational waves, this is the most direct way to prove that a black hole exists.” “It’s a huge deal,” says Luis Lehner, a physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario who is unaffiliated with the LIGO project. “It has pushed the fundamental theory of gravity forward in a very strong way and gives us an incredible tool to probe very deep questions of the universe.” -- source link
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