Einstein Was Right! Existence of Gravitational Waves Finally Confirmed
© Flickr/ NASA Blueshift
Scientists working at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project have announced a major scientific breakthrough - the existence of gravitational waves.
"We have detected gravitational waves. We did it," LIGO executive director David Reitze said during a press conference at Washington DC.
This Image obtained January 31, 2016 from NASA shows a self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover vehicle at Namib Dune, where the rover's activities included scuffing into the dune with a wheel and scooping samples of sand for laboratory analysis.
The researchers were able to observe the ripples of space-time, also known as gravitational waves, caused by a collision of two black holes which occurred almost 1.3 billion years ago. The phenomenon was actually detected on September 14, 2015, and since then the LIGO scientists have been working tirelessly to verify the accuracy of their observations.
The discovery confirms a prediction made by Albert Einstein a century ago, when the great physicist postulated that a collision of extremely massive objects should produce observable ripples in the fabric of space-time.
Furthermore, the discovery made by LIGO has also become the first actual confirmation of the existence of black holes.
The discovery will likely provide scientists with new ways to discover more about the celestial bodies by studying the gravitational waves emitted by them.
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