‘A WHOLE NEW WINDOW ON THE UNIVERSE’
Discovery affirms Einstein theory
In a discovery that promises to revolutionize astronomy, scientists have made the first direct observations of gravitational waves – bizarre ripples in space time foreseen by Albert Einstein a century ago.
The find is a triumph for Einstein’s celebrated general theory of relativity, the basis of his 1916 prediction that the fabric of the universe is perturbed by gravitational energy. The find is also a triumph for the mammoth scientific apparatus – the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) – that was the first to pick up the stealthy advance of these waves, in this case created by the violent union of two black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
Other scientists hailed the find as the kind of advance that comes along only once or twice in a lifetime.
Because gravitational waves carry information about their source, the ability to detect these weird undulations will allow researchers to study distant and elusive features of the universe. Black holes too far way to study using today’s techniques, for example, should become easy scientific prey with the help of gravitational waves.
Study of the universe via gravitational waves “will be the astronomy of the 21st century,” predicted Arizona State University’s Lawrence Krauss, who is not part of the LIGO team. “This is a whole new window on the universe.”
As far back as the 1970s, scientists garnered indirect evidence for such waves, spawned by the movements of massive objects in space, such as spinning supernovae or whirling pairs of neutron stars. The $1 billion LIGO directly captured the wave itself, which, if confirmed, would be “a monumental extra step,” said Cole Miller of the University of Maryland, who is not affiliated with LIGO.
LIGO’s twin detectors, one in Hanford, Wash., the other in Livingston, La., picked up the wave on Sept. 14, 2015 – several days before official data collection was scheduled to resume after a five-year renovation of the equipment.
The gravitational waves detected by LIGO came from the final moments before the collision of two black holes somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.