Gravitational Waves study
What an amazing discovery
The discovery
The sighting of the gravitational waves came from a small telescope on the roof of a laboratory Saturday three quarters of a mile from the South Pole. First came the rumours. But then researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics went public. Their telescope had spotted indirect evidence of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time, from the earliest moments of the universe.
Why haven't they been found sooner?
The waves are very small when they get sent out from the black holes. They are small and then grow weaker as they make their journey into a galaxy. Scientist haven't been able to pick up on the gravitational waves when they reach our solar system because they are so weak. When the waves get to a nearby place where we could start to read them, they were almost too small to even be discovered. Another reason is because the scientists and labs didn't have the right equipment until a few months ago to spot these amazingly small waves.
What are gravitational waves?
Gravitational waves are ripples that stretch and squeeze space itself as they travel across the universe. The waves are created by cataclysmic events, like the collision of black holes or exploding stars in the distant universe.
Cool facts
Albert Einstein predicted gravitational waves in his 1916 theory of general relativity. His equations married space and time, and showed how the product, space-time, was warped by matter and energy. The warping of space-time gives rise to the force of gravity.