yego.me
yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Discovering Gravitational Waves | StarTalk

2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

[Music]

30 million years ago, in a distant galaxy, 30 million light years away, two black holes collided. Each black hole is itself a significant disturbance in the fabric of space and time. When they collide, it creates an even greater ripple that gets sent out at the speed of light.

A ripple through the fabric of space and time. In the world of technology, a person is born called Albert Einstein, who thinks about the fabric of space and time. He comes up with the general theory of relativity, predicting the fact that such a thing as ripples through the fabric of space and time exists. We would later show that two black holes would be the best example of a ripple through the fabric of space and time.

Meanwhile, this ripple continues to move. Einstein predicts we should be able to detect one of these. We don't have the technology yet; that would take another 80 to 90 years just to create the apparatus that could detect it. We build the apparatus.

This holds a laser interferometric gravity wave Observatory, LIGO for short. We turn on the switch. Within days of turning on the switch, that wave washes across the Earth, and we detect it. We detected something that was cast into motion before we were human.

Einstein not only predicted the existence of gravity waves; he came up with the general theory of relativity. He also laid the foundation for the invention of the laser, and it is lasers that were used to detect the gravity waves. That's badass!

That's [Music] Einstein.

Safari Live - Day 364 | National Geographic
How did they actually take this picture? (Very Long Baseline Interferometry)

More Articles

View All
How Apocalypses Paved the Way for Humans (and terror birds) | Nat Geo Explores
Everybody thinks mass extinctions are a bad thing, and for some, yeah, they were literally the worst. But they also show how nature can bounce back. In fact, while extinctions are like a large scale delete button, they’re also a way to trigger some new am…
Why Indifference is Power | Priceless Benefits of Being Indifferent
Many centuries ago, Alexander the Great decided to visit a philosopher named Diogenes, who lived in the city of Corinth. At the time, many philosophers and statesmen were eager to visit the ancient Greek king of Macedon, but Diogenes didn’t show the sligh…
How adding your phone number and 2-factor authentication helps protect your account
All right, Guemmy, so sometimes sites ask for, like, a phone number for security purposes, and I’m always actually afraid to give my phone number. One, I just don’t want random people calling me all the time. But how do you think about that? When is it va…
The Nature of Nature | National Geographic
The ocean has been my passion since I was young. I used to dream of being Jacques Cousteau, exploring the seven seas with my team. But in just a few generations, the underwater world has changed dramatically. All over the planet, so many places are now vo…
Lac operon
We’re now going to talk about one of the most famous operons, and this is the Lac operon. It is part of the E. coli genome and is involved in the metabolism of lactose. The “Lac” right over here is referring to lactose, and so you can imagine that it code…
MARS: Humanity's Most Dangerous Mission
Just recently, 18 new Earth-sized exoplanets have been discovered. They range from 70% Earth size to more than twice as large as our planet. We know at least one of them, for certain, has conditions that almost mirror ours on Earth. So, there are worlds o…