credits: www.independent.co.uk |
Physicists are going to announce it on Friday and if these rumors about observing gravity waves are true, then yayy!
Now, why is this such a big deal?
Gravitational waves are theoretical predictions of the general relativity theory and now finally, we have been able to detect them.
Consider space-time to be flat(like a sheet) and when we put a massive object on it, the sheet bends. This phenomena spreads out in the form of waves(gravitational) that gives you information(when detected) about that particular mass. So if u have details of gravitational waves, you basically have the details of that object causing this curve in the flat space-time sheet! Sounds easy, but its really difficult to detect these waves, as they're really small, because they come from a great distance and hence lose their strength(like a ripple in the water, losing strength after some distance). So detecting something that small, is a big deal and we have been able to achieve that!
So for those interested, here are some links to check out!
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/10/10958154/einstein-gravitational-waves-ligo-discovery-announcement-live-stream
http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-6-cosmic-questions-they-can-tackle-1.19337
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