Scientists May Have Discovered Gravitational Waves

Learn why gravitational waves are so important, and how scientists believe they finally have the answer.

The science community erupted on social media about something called gravitational waves when a scientist tweeted something peculiarly interesting (well, interesting to geeks!). Although we’re not going to spill the beans at the beginning of this news article, we can let you know that, if discovered, it will be the biggest breakthrough in science ever since Newton invented gravity (or something similar).

Lawrence Krauss, an award-winning cosmologist working in the Arizona State University, tweeted the following message: "My earlier rumor about LIGO has been confirmed by independent sources. Stay tuned! Gravitational waves may have been discovered!! Exciting," Krauss tweeted, referring to an earlier tweet: "Rumor of a gravitational wave detection at LIGO detector. Amazing if true. Will post details if it survives."

Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in spacetime around a century ago in his theory of general relativity. Although we know a lot about the other 3 forces in the universe, gravity is an elusive force that needs a little more thorough explaining. Think of spacetime as a rubber sheet spread out through the universe. Now say, when a bowling ball is dropped onto the sheet, the resulting curvature produced is the effect of gravity.  

When an object of enormous size accelerates all of a sudden, it is believed to produce ripples through spacetime, something akin to water drops producing ripples on the surface of a water body. Similarly, when a star or celestial body explodes, or two black holes join to form a supermassive black hole, scientists believe ripples or gravitational waves should be spotted.

Knowing and spotting these gravitational waves would reveal secrets of the universe, such as high-energy events and highly-massive celestial bodies & black holes. It would also provide more insight into how our universe was created.

These ripples are so hard to detect that scientists estimate that by the time these gravitational waves reach our planet, they are almost one-billionth the diameter of a single atom. Carefully calibrated instruments placed in isolated environments without noise are essential to detect gravitational waves.

One such detector, the $500 million LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory), went in operation in 2002 and hasn’t been able to detect anything. However, in September 2015, an Advanced LIGO was put into operation. It works by splitting a beam of laser light and sending the two beams across two arms of variable length. If there is a length difference between the two arms, then the returning beams would produce an electrical signal. This signal can tell us whether gravitational waves exist or not.

There have been such rumors about the discovery of gravitational waves in the past. In 2014, Scientists working BICEP2 (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) revealed that they had made a similar breakthrough. However, they concluded that the finding was merely galactic dust.

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