Einstein's Gravitational Waves Finally Detected 100 Years after Rrediction
A century back, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves which in these times require a specialized instrument to view and some considerable experience in knowing where to look. Today's scientists from LIGO took four decades to achieve what Einstein had been talking about a long time ago.
"It will win a Nobel Prize," according to Marc Kamionkowski, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
It all began some billions of years ago in space when two black holes (gravitational fields), which were remnants of collapsed stars of phenomenal size, had been drawn together such that after 11.3 billion years had past, they finally fused together. This contact between the two sent ripples through the universe and passed the Earth some five months back in Sept. 14, 2015.
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At that instant, the gravitational waves had been detected by physicists who have been looking for about 40 years now. This marked a victory for the 1,000 physicists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana.
In February, LIGO made the announcement official after five months of rumors circulating about the discovery.
David Reitze, who is a physicist and the executive director of LIGO at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, confirmed, "We did it. All the rumors swirling around out there got most of it right."
This discovery shall test Einstein's theories, such as that of gravity and the general theory of relativity as well as irrevocably providing evidence that black holes exist.
The first person who had the distinction of being the first one to view it is Marco Drago, a postdoc from Padua, Italy. At that time, he had been at Hanover, Germany, in his office at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics. He had gotten an email alert that the two LIGO detectors had registered an event, a very big one.
After verifying the event, when he was sure of what it was, Drago said, "I'm going to call up my family and say, 'You know, I was the first to see this.'"
Sources:
http://uk.reuters.com/news/picture/einsteins-gravitational-waves-detected-i?articleId=UKKCN0VK1RT
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/gravitational-waves-einstein-s-ripples-spacetime-spotted-first-time
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/here-s-first-person-spot-those-gravitational-waves
