{"id":12707,"date":"2016-02-11T07:42:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=12707"},"modified":"2016-02-11T07:42:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:42:44","slug":"gravitational-waves-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/11\/gravitational-waves-at-last\/","title":{"rendered":"Gravitational Waves at Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

ONCE\u00a0upon a time<\/strong>, there lived a man<\/a> who was fascinated by the phenomenon of gravity. In his mind he imagined\u00a0experiments<\/a> in rocket ships and elevators, eventually concluding that gravity isn’t a conventional “force” at all — it’s a manifestation of the curvature of spacetime. He threw himself into the study of differential geometry<\/a>, the abstruse mathematics of arbitrarily curved manifolds. At the end of his investigations he had a new way of thinking about space and time, culminating in a marvelous equation<\/a> that quantified how gravity responds to matter and energy in the universe.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not being one to rest on his laurels, this man worked out a number of consequences of his new theory. One<\/a> was that changes in gravity didn’t spread instantly throughout the universe; they traveled at the speed of light, in the form of gravitational waves<\/a>. In later years he would change his mind<\/a> about this prediction, only to later change it back. Eventually more and more scientists became convinced that this prediction was valid, and worth testing. They launched a spectacularly ambitious program to build a technological marvel of an observatory<\/a> that would be sensitive to the faint traces left by a passing gravitational wave. Eventually, a century after the prediction was made — a press conference was called.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chances are that everyone\u00a0reading this blog post has heard that LIGO, the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory, officially announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves<\/a>. Two black holes, caught in a close orbit, gradually lost energy and spiraled toward each other as they emitted gravitational waves, which zipped through space at the speed of light before\u00a0eventually being detected by our observatories here on Earth. Plenty of other places will give you details on this specific discovery, or tutorials on the nature of gravitational waves, including in user-friendly comic\/video form<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Gravitational Waves Explained<\/div><\/div>
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