Gravitational Waves

Just yesterday, scientists at The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) discovered something that will change our understanding of the skies forever. Gravitational waves formed by two black holes colliding with each other.

Albert Einstein theorized a century ago in 1916 that Gravitational waves existed. His theory was that is space time is the fabric of space, then huge events like two black holes banging into each other should send ripples through the fabric. These ripples were called Gravitational waves. But, since no one could prove that Gravitational waves existed, the theory was dismissed. That is, until the 1960's when an engineering professor called Joe Weber tried to prove that Gravitational waves existed. he did this by setting up two aluminum poles in vacuums. One in Maryland and the other in Chicago. He reasoned that is Gravitational waves passed through the earth, both the bars would ring like bells. People thought that Weber had proved that Gravitational waves existed but when other laboratories didn't get the same result, people started doubting this. Even so, Weber kept on trying until his death in 2000.

A professor called Reiner Weiss who is a co founder of LIGO was working at MIT when he was inspired to study Gravitational waves. He had a unique way to prove that Gravitational waves existed. He made a vacuum sealed L shaped tube with the two legs of equal size. There was a protrusion at the joint from where a laser was fired. A mirror divides the laser to go to both the leags. If there were no Gravitational waves, the lasers would have come back to the mirror at the same time. But, if there were Gravitational waves, the lasers would come back at slightly different times. The scientists used audio to check when the lasers came back so when a Gravitational wave passed through earth, they  heard a chirping sound.

Since the black hole collision happened billions of years ago, the waves weren't that big. The waves took this long to come to the earth because it was many light years away. According to Einstein's theory, the space time continuum would be distorted in places that were close to the place the two black holes collided. That is to say that time would have no meaning. Well this is still a theory and there is still no way to prove it. Anyway, let's just hope that Earth doesn't come close enough to any black holes