Written by Timon Rossolimos
Gravitational waves (ripples through space-time fabric of
the universe) have been discovered by the collision of two massive black holes.
As you know black holes are an enormous object of gravity so powerful, light
cannot escape.
In another Galaxy, two black holes collided in a swirling movement around 1.3 billion years ago.
These black Holes were 150 km in diameter and 30 times the mass of our sun.
These two black holes crashed into each other at half the speed of light.
This caused a shudder through the universe.
And in that fraction of a second when they collided, this caused a HUGE impact.
This sent an enormous shockwave of gravitational waves (ripples) through the space-time fabric.
Before I continue we need to just picture what space-time fabric is…
Space-time fabric is like a trampoline… If you put a tennis ball on a trampoline you’ll see a small dent (depression) between the tennis ball and the trampoline fabric…
If you place a bowling ball on the trampoline, you’ll see a deeper depression in the trampoline…
Now what if you put the bowling ball in the middle and you roll the tennis ball around the trampoline?
The tennis ball will roll around the the heavier (more mass) bowling ball and will get closer to it.
Now let’s relate this to the universe.
If you place a bowling ball in the middle of the trampoline and you roll a whole bunch of marbles around from the top, you’ll see how they’ll revolve around the bowling balling until they meet the object.
If you throw a whole bunch of marbles in one direction and another bunch of marbles in the other direction, marbles will hit and fall towards the bowling ball quicker.
Other marbles will roll around and around until they reach the middle.
This is how the planets revolve the sun. And this is how moons
revolve around the planets.
And we know the planets and objects around the galaxy, are falling into the sun.
This is how gravity works, with EVERYTHING. Basically, objects follow the curvature of space-time and attract everything to everything.
But here’s the mind blowing part.
The space-time fabric acts as liquid waves. So as the marbles are rolling around towards the bowling ball, ripples and waves are created around them.
Hence the dual particle-wave theory (Which we’ll save for another day).
And now we’ve detected ripples from the black holes, we’ve
been able to detect them here on earth.
Similar to when you drop a rock in the water, it causes ripples. Well the collision of these two black holes caused ripples through the fabric of space-time. It started off as enormous waves and has been getting smaller and smaller since
And here on earth, scientists have finally discovered ONE of these ripples which they’ve been waiting for over 100 years.
Einstein proposed this gravitational waves theory. This was published in 1915 where he explained the General Theory of Relativity.
He proposed that any type of mass causes a mass distortion of the shape in the universe as well as time. Basically, gravity warps in space and time.
But he said that these ripples (gravitational waves) are tiny to detect with, back then, technology.
Because the further the ripples disperse, the smaller they become…
Gravity is also known as one of the weakest forces in the universe.
But finally scientists have physically found evidence to prove the last of Einstein’s theory of relativity.
And this month (February 2016) LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) announced that they found the ripple (wave).
But as you know the reverberation wave that reached us was tiny, (1/1,000th diameter of a Proton).
The experiment was done by using two labs.
One lab was in Livingston, Louisiana and the other in Hanford, Washington.
The labs lasers have 4 km long vacuum sealed tunnels. These
devices are called interferometers.
When they shoot out laser beams, the light travels across those two arms. And with the interferometer, they can detect and read data which is 10,000 times smaller than a proton.
These laser beams were fired into two L-Shaped pipes.
This bounced off light around the series of mirrors. And when gravitational wave (ripples) passed, it would stretch the arms by different amounts.
These laser beams warped space-time, which made it appear that one mirror was closer to the other.
The speed of light is the only medium which doesn’t get interfered with the stretching and squeezing of space-time. This is why we can’t measure the distance between a ruler from A to B. Because a Ruler and the distance from A to B gets stretched and squeezed simultaneously.
This was discovered by measuring the time it took for the laser to go from one mirror to the next.
And so scientists use this to measure the distances.
One tiny strain in space-time would change the timing of when lasers reach their destination. And that’s what happened on that one day.
The wiggles came about 7 mili-seconds apart. And these recordings were identical to what the super-computers predicted. And these recordings were based on the calculations of Einstein’s theory.
This data has been observed and scrutinized all around the world since September 2015, to find out if the result were gravitational waves.
And guess what, THEY ARE. Thanks to LIGO.
This discovery is just as exciting as when scientists discovered X-rays, gamma rays or even the telescope. And so it could result in another Nobel Prize.
These Gravitational Waves findings have opened a new window of opportunities onto the Universe and on our very lives.
We’ve identified radio, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays and now GRAVITIATIONAL WAVES.
This will help us understand black holes better, gravity, supernovas, fundamental laws of the universe and how the universe is expanding.
This will introduce us to new inventions, discoveries and new light to astrophysics and astronomy.
And by using these gravitational waves we’ll be able to move one step forward as to find out the beginning of the universe, how it came about and how it works.
We are living in very special times for science!
Written by Timon Rossolimos, 12 February 2016
