Einstein was right! Caltech, LIGO help discover gravitational waves

As if we didn’t already know, a discovery aounced Thursday only adds to the legendary genius of Albert Einstein.

The National Science Foundation, along with researchers from Caltech, aounced Thursday moing the discovery of gravitational waves, an until now theoretical phenomenon first dreamed up by Einstein.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves, we did it,” said David Reitze, executive director of the LIGO Laboratory, a Caltech facility, in Washington, D.C.

The crowd roared in Caltech auditorium where professors, students and researchers gathered to watch the aouncement.

“I think we’re opening a window on the universe, a window on gravitational wave astronomy,” Reitze said.

Einstein wrote about the existence of gravitational waves, but it took a technological upgrade brought online last year and decades of research for scientists at Caltech and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to finally prove it.

The National Science Foundation has funded the two institution’s work since the 1980s.

LIGO detected the gravitational waves from two binary black holes combining millions of years ago. The discovery proved not only the existence of gravitational waves, but the existence of two black holes in close proximity.

“As we open a window of astronomy, we may see things we’ve never seen before,” Reitze said.

The discovery of gravitational waves helps bring Einstein’s theory of general relativity into reality. Einstein believed that large masses distort spacetime in the same way a bowling ball on a stretched fabric causes it to sag. When those large objects accelerate, they send ripples, or gravitational waves, out into the universe.

To detect these ripples, scientists from Caltech and MIT built the Laser Interferometer Gravitation-wave Observatory, which shoots a laser between two mirrors to measure miniscule changes in distance between the two points.

LIGO isolates the mirrors in Louisiana and Washington from outside interference from seismic activity, semi-trucks and other disruptions to lessen the “noise” picked up by the detector. The two institutions began operating a more advanced version of LIGO in September 2015 after failing to detect gravitational waves in their earlier efforts.

Beyond confirming Einstein’s genius, the discovery gives scientists a new way of seeking out and understanding some of the biggest mysteries in our universe, like black holes and supeovae.

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