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
