History was made in deep space when two massive black holes began spiraling in toward each other and collided. The event happened billions of light years away, but the effects of this cosmic collision made waves the scientific community has been anticipating for a long time: gravitational waves. Finally, there was evidence that these waves or ripples in the fabric of spacetime exist—just as Albert Einstein had predicted a century ago in his General Theory of Relativity.
The announcement came in February with the confirmation of the findings of two teams—one in Washington state, the other in Louisiana—working collaboratively on an experiment called LIGO (laser interferometric gravity-wave observatory).
According to noted physicist S. James Gates, the last time something this huge shook the scientific world, it was the discovery of the Higgs boson. Capturing the information carried by gravity waves--which he describes as the sound waves of spacetime--scientists will gain a more accurate understanding of cosmic events and be able to discover what the universe was like all the way back to the Big Bang. For physicists, he says, it’s like opening a door to a dark room and suddenly turning on the lights.
Tonight, Gates uses computer-generated images to describe the mathematics Einstein employed in 1915 to predict the existence of gravity waves, and how his work informed the extraordinary technology that finally proved him right.
Gates is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and directs its Center for String and Particle Theory. He is the recipient of the National Medal of Science, and is a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
