Point Breakthrough! Surf's Up with Gravitational Waves

Sometimes it seems as if everything big has already been discovered. The past holds numerous huge discoveries which have impacted every aspect of our lives that it makes you wonder - what more could we possibly discover?

Of course, the answer to that question is: everything.

The universe is vast and old. Humans have been trying to understand the universe for at least several thousands years. And, we've been using science to accomplish those means for only several hundred. In a universe that's 13.8 billion years old... we might as well be in kindergarten.

Right: Cave Painting - Gua Tewet - The Tree of Life - Borneo,Indonesia.
Left: WMAP - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - Thermal radiation left over from the Big Bang

It's amazing what we have been able to learn in a relatively (*wink wink*) short time. 

Over 400 years ago, Nicolaus Copernicus hypothesized the Sun to be at the center of the Solar System. 62 years later, Johannes Kepler used mathematical principles to describe the motions of the planets under a heliocentric model, which predicted how the planets should behave in such a system. On the heels of Kepler, Galileo Galilei first peered through his telescope 5 years after Kepler began publishing his research. Galileo's physical observations of the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter finally proved Copernicus to be right. Hypothesis turned to theory a.k.a fact.

Through science, predictions about how the universe works can be made. 100 years ago, Albert Einstein became another legend in science history to slide the curtain open on our universe even further. 

Through Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, violent events in the universe such as black holes merging, neutron stars colliding, or even supernovae, should produce ripples in space-time called gravitational waves. However, gravitational waves have been elusive for the past 100 years because we needed technology that was sensitive enough to detect their very slight effect as these waves pass through the Earth. 

Visualization of a gravitational wave.

Luckily, we are now in an age where we have developed that technology. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) was designed with the sensitivity to detect gravitational waves through the use of mirrors and lasers that can detect any slight movement of those mirrors that occurs. LIGO has been in operation for 25 years, but just recently it received an upgrade to make it even more sensitive. After it re-opened and resumed it's search, guess what LIGO discovered...

Gravitational waves!

The frequency of waves told researchers that these gravitational waves were produced from the merger of binary black holes, which occurred 1.3 billion years ago. Not only have we now proven gravitational waves to exists and Einstein to be once again correct, but we have also proven the existence of binary black holes!

So, what's the significance? Well, through the successful detection of gravitational waves, a new area of space science (gravitational wave science) can open up. The ability to detect this phenomenon with LIGO will allow us to advance our technology even further, and we can use gravitational waves to detect other violent events in the universe in order to learn and understand how our universe works even better. 

Science...it works. 

GO HERE for more information about LIGO and gravitational waves.