Gravitational waves, the same ones that were predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago, are first observed on September 14, 2015. They came from a collision between two black holes.
As of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, there have already been four detections, and each of them confirms the General Theory of Relativity.
The signal was extremely weak when it reached Earth; even so, the event turned into a revolution in astrophysics. Gravitational waves are a totally new way of observing the most violent events in the universe and testing the limits of our knowledge.
The signal was extremely weak when it reached Earth; even so, the event turned into a revolution in astrophysics. Gravitational waves are a totally new way of observing the most violent events in space and testing the limits of our knowledge.
LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory ) is a collaborative project with thousands of researchers from more than twenty countries. Together, they have developed a project that has almost half a century of history. The 2017 Nobel Prizes in Physics, with their enthusiasm and determination, are a reflection of LIGO’s success.
Pioneers Rainer Weiss and Kip S. Thorne, along with Barry C. Barish, the scientist and leader who brought the project to completion, have ensured that nearly five decades of effort will pay off. But the most important is the definitive observation of gravitational waves.
By the mid-1970s, Rainer Weiss had already analyzed possible sources of background noise that would disturb measurements, and had also designed a detector, an interferometer-based laser, that would overcome this noise. From the beginning, both Kip Thorne and Rainer Weiss were firmly convinced that gravitational waves could be detected, and that they would revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
Gravitational waves spread out at the speed of light , filling the universe, as Albert Einstein described in his Theory of Relativity. Generally, they are created when a mass accelerates, such as when a pirouette performed by an ice skater; or when a pair of the black holes revolve around each other. Einstein was convinced that it would never be possible to measure them.
But he was wrong. And he never knew .
The achievement of the LIGO project was to use a pair of gigantic laser interferometers to measure how the wave’s gravity passed through the Earth with a change thousands of times smaller than an atomic nucleus.
Until now, all kinds of electromagnetic radiation, such as cosmic rays or neutrinos, have been used to explore the universe. However, gravitational waves are direct testimony to disruptions in the space-time fabric itself .
This is something completely new and different, managing to open worlds never seen before and an enormous wealth of knowledge, which awaits those who manage to capture these waves, and interpret their message.
