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.

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