But then again, he had no idea of the advances we would make in technology. He did not think they could ever be detected. Now we have opened new “eyes” on the sky, not so much seeing as feeling the ripples in space (strictly speaking, in space-time) called gravity waves, from the most cataclysmic events since the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.Įinstein’s theory of gravity, known as the theory of general relativity, predicted the existence of these waves a hundred years ago. Most astronomical observatories study light from stars, or radio or other electromagnetic waves. These incredibly sensitive detectors are called Advanced LIGO, for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. The tiny wiggle was detected in Louisiana and a few milliseconds later in Washington state as the ripple in space swept past and continued on its way through the universe. For a tiny fraction of a second, as it passed through us all, we were stretched in one direction and squashed in the other direction and then the reverse, like wobbling jelly.īut the only people who noticed were scientists, who found that 4 kilometer-long laser beams were stretched and squashed by less than a hundred-millionth the size of an atom. Spreading in all directions and so getting weaker all the time, it swept past Earth on Sept.

Traveling at 300,000 kilometers per second, the speed of light, it had covered 95 percent of its journey to Earth when the dinosaurs became extinct. More than a thousand million years before dinosaurs roamed Earth, a ripple in space was spreading through the universe.

Hole 7 gravity lab