Gravitational waves carry undistorted information about their dramatic origins in black holes.
Over a billion years ago, two black holes collided and merged in space. The wobble they generated - gravitational waves - hurtled through space and was heard as a "chirp" on Earth in September.
Here's why this is a ginormous (that's the scientific term) development:
It's a big win for physics and astronomy. Now, scientists hope to gain much more information about black holes. Astronomers can both listen to and see stars and universe -a poetic description from some scientists.
Each of the black holes had a mass of about 30 suns. As gravity brought them closer together, they started orbiting each other faster and faster, whipping up to the speed of light before colliding. Their violent merger released a stupendous amount of energy in the form of gravitation waves that reached the earth in September.
Energy released a billion years ago reached us in September - think of how far in space the collision took place.
Physicists said the gravitational wave detected in September originated in the last fraction of a second before the fusion of two black holes, though they can't say precisely where.
Albert Einstein had predicted such a phenomenon would occur when two black holes collided, but it had never before been observed.
The signal lasted less than a second, explained The Washington Post, adding that before this, "No one had ever seen direct evidence of 'binary' black holes - two black holes paired together and then merging".
Gravitational waves carry undistorted information about their dramatic origins in black holes.
Black holes are interesting because they do not give off any light and that is why these particular objects had never been seen before - because all of the astrophysical instruments to date use light.
The discovery is the result of a billion-dollar experiment, with scientists collaborating all over the world, some of whom worked on this project for decades. The effort was anchored in America at Caltech and MIT.
All hail LIGO, which picked up the signal sent from space, to put in (very) layman's terms. These are some of the world's most sophisticated science machines - detectors built for sensing tiny vibrations in the universe - located at two locations in the US. Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO for short. They track gravitational waves using the physics of laser light and space. They do not rely on light in the skies like a telescope does.
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