![]() “The LIGO measurement is a spectacular confirmation of not just one, but two of the key predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity: the existence of gravitational waves and black holes,” Turok said. Perimeter Institute Director Neil Turok described the discovery as one of the greatest moments in science. The LIGO detector in Hanford, Washington (Credit: LIGO) ![]() “Because it was so brief, the total energy was what you’d get by taking three suns, annihilating them, and putting that into gravitational waves.” “The power output was 50 times greater than all power put out by all of the stars in the universe put together. “The storm was brief – 20 milliseconds – but very powerful,” Thorne said. The signal is so strong, the researchers report in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, that it exceeds the “five sigma” standard of statistical significance physicists use to claim a discovery.Īstrophysicist Kip Thorne, who co-founded the LIGO experiment, presented a simulation of the black hole merger that created the gravitational wave. “Now that we know binary black holes are there, we’ll begin listening to the universe.” “This is just the beginning,” González said. The signals also indicate the wave carried three solar masses of energy. The signals exactly match what Einsteinian gravitation predicts for the merger of two black holes. This is how we know we have gravitational waves.” “We know it’s real, because seven milliseconds later, we saw the same thing in the Hanford detector. “For four kilometres, that’s a tiny, tiny fraction of a proton diameter. The first detection, at the Louisiana observatory, had a peak value of 10-21 metres. “It’s been a long journey,” she told the news conference. She said this effort had taken a long time. Gabriela González is the spokesperson for aLIGO and a Perimeter Institute Distinguished Visiting Research Chair. After significant upgrades to the detectors in Louisiana and Washington, Advanced LIGO did its first observation run in September 2015. The original LIGO experiment ran from 2002 to 2010 as a proof of concept. LIGO, a system of two identical interferometers constructed to detect the tiny vibrations of passing gravitational waves, was conceived and built by MIT and Caltech researchers, funded by the US National Science Foundation. “This was truly a scientific moon shot, and we did it,” Reitze said. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, created when two massive objects – such as black holes or neutron stars – hurtle around each other at extremely high speeds and collide.įirst put forward 100 years ago as a consequence of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, they have challenged theorists and experimentalists alike as one of the few elements of the theory that had not been experimentally proven. I think we’re opening the window of gravitational astronomy.”Īrtist’s image: Gravitational waves (Credit: NASA) I think we’re doing something equally important here today. Four hundred years ago, Galileo turned a telescrope to the sky and opened the era of modern observational astronomy. What’s really exciting is what comes next. “This is not just the detection of gravitational waves. The gravitational waves were generated when two black holes merged 1.3 billion years ago, he told the gathering of press and scientists. We’ve convinced ourselves that’s the case.” “It took months of careful checking and rechecking to make sure what we saw was something that was a gravitational wave. “It was exactly what you would expect from Einstein’s general relativity from two black holes spiralling and merging together,” he said. In the early hours of September 14, 2015, during an engineering test a few days before the official search was to begin, aLIGO’s two detectors recorded a very characteristic signal. ![]() This comes five months after the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO) began collecting data following an exhaustive overhaul that significantly increased the sensitivity of its detectors. We did it,” said David Reitze at the Washington announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves. In an announcement in Washington, DC, on Thursday, scientists from Caltech, MIT, and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration presented strong evidence of their discovery. A century after they were proposed in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, scientists have finally verified that gravitational waves and black holes exist. ![]()
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