EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT GRAVITY WAVES, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

Recall the other day LIGO scientists announced a major breakthrough in the field of physics, astrophysics and the study of our universe, the discovery of gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein even 100 years ago. Resource Gizmodo managed to find a doctor Amber Staver Observatory Livingston in Louisiana, the LIGO Collaboration, and ask in detail about what it means for physics. We understand that a few articles to the global understanding of the new ways to perceive our world to come will be difficult, but we will try.

There was a lot of work on the detection of a single gravitational wave to date, and it was a major breakthrough. It seems that opens many new possibilities for astronomy - but whether it is the first detection of "simple" proof that the detection is possible by itself, or you can already extract from it further scientific achievements? What do you hope to gain from this in the future? Will there be methods of detection of these waves is easier in the future?

It really is the first detection of a breakthrough, but the goal has always been to use the gravitational waves to make a new astronomy. Instead of looking at the universe visible light, and now we can feel subtle changes in gravity, which caused the biggest, strongest, and (in my opinion) the most interesting things in the universe - including those about which information we could never get a by light.

We were able to use this new type of astronomy to the waves of the first discovery. Using what we know about general relativity (general relativity), we were able to predict what gravitational waves similar objects like black holes or neutron stars. Signal, which we found to correspond to a predicted pair of black holes, one 36 and the other 29 times the mass of the sun, swirling the closer to each other. Finally, they merge into a single black hole. So it is not only the first detection of gravitational waves, but also the first direct observation of black holes, because they can not be observed with a light (only substance that revolves around them).