The physics and astronomy communities have been blessed with a very exciting month this February. On Feb. 11 gravitational waves were confirmed as detected, proving Einstein’s theory of relativity.
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According to history.com, Einstein published four papers in 1905. Einstein was 26-years-old and was not even a scientist, rather he worked in a patent office. His third article was his most famous and most controversial. This was the special theory of relativity and this paper was met with no response from the physics community at the time.
In 1915, he published another paper on the general theory of relativity. He theorized that objects in space were the reason why gravity existed. Dummies.com states that an object in space causes a bend in the space-time continuum. This, in turn, creates the gravitational field toward the center of the object. It was in this paper that Einstein predicted the phenomenon of gravitational waves.
In laymen’s terms, gravity is like a gel that holds everything in place and bends and wiggles when the objects inside move. It is what keeps humans from floating away into space and even keeps Earth in its orbit around the sun. Einstein theorized that should a catastrophic event happen in space, due to the gel-like nature of space, we would be able to sense it on Earth.
CNN reported that the gravitational waves were created by the two massive black holes that collided 1 billion years ago. The waves or ripples created by this collision traveled through space finally reaching Earth this month.
Researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), based out of Louisiana detected the waves on Sept. 14, 2015, and after five months of testing equipment to make sure everything had been in working order at the time, confirmed with a “five sigma” level of certainty. The LIGO location in Washington State received these signals as well.
Scientific American explains that five sigma is a statistical term that means that they are 99.9 percent of an uncertainty value that is one in 10 million.
LIGO scientists estimated that the black holes that created the ripples were 29 to 36 times the mass of the sun. They also claimed that a mass about three times the mass of the sun was transformed into the gravitational waves that were received by Earth.
According to the press release from LIGO, the scientific community knew that gravitational waves were possible and could indeed exist after a demonstration in the 1970s. It was not until this year that they were able to be observed.
“Our observation of gravitational waves accomplishes an ambitious goal set out over five decades ago to directly detect this elusive phenomenon and better understand the universe, and, fittingly, fulfills Einstein’s legacy on the 100th anniversary of his general theory of relativity,” said David H. Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory.
The fact that the signals were received 100 years after Einstein theorized their existence is an amusing coincidence to those in science. Now, according to LIGO, a whole new branch of study is possible. It will focus solely on gravitational wave astronomy.
All physics, astronomy and astrology students should be celebrating this discovery.Their job possibilities just became as endless and infinite as the universe.
