SPACE — Gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime that radiate outwards from some of the most violent and powerful events in the cosmos. Traveling through the vastness of the universe to reach us on Earth, these waves will gradually lose their energy, becoming fainter and invisible.
Measurements of gravitational waves, also called gravitational radiation at facilities such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are significant. The measurements not only help confirm the most accurate theories about gravity as one of the fundamental forces of the universe, but also offer astronomers a new way of seeing the cosmos.
Even more exciting, observations in gravitational waves can be combined with observations in the electromagnetic spectrum to create powerful new forms of astronomy. This is what NASA calls multi-messenger astronomy.
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Who Discovered Gravity Waves?
Gravitational waves were first predicted in Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory of gravity, known as general relativity. One of the main conclusions of this theory is that gravity arises as a result of the fact that objects with mass warp the fabric of space and time.
An analogy would be taking a stretched sheet of rubber and placing balls of different masses on top of it to create a bend in the fabric. The greater the mass of the ball, the more extreme the warp it causes.
Things sitting in spacetime are similar, but in three dimensions of space and one dimension of time, not two dimensions of stretched rubber sheets. The greater the mass of an object, the more extreme the warping of space it causes. So a star warps spacetime more than a planet, and a black hole warps it more than a star.
However, general relativity goes further than this when explaining the effect of mass on spacetime. LIGO explained that the mathematics from Einstein’s theory predicted that two accelerating large-mass objects would disturb spacetime causing it to ripple and send waves traveling outward from it.
These ripples in spacetime, spreading in all directions from their source, travel at the speed of light, which is also the speed of gravity. Gravitational waves and the codes they carry are information about events and the objects that created them, and they are all sent through the cosmos. Source: Space.com
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