GRAVITATIONAL WAVES - SCI & TECH
News: Science
for All | Why does observing gravitational waves matter?
What's in the news?
● Last
week, scientists revealed evidence that the universe is constantly flooded with
low-frequency gravitational waves, unlocking new avenues to expand our
knowledge of the universe.
Key takeaways:
● Albert Einstein’s theory
of relativity also predicted the existence of
gravitational waves more than a century ago, but the phenomenon was only
directly observed in 2016.
Gravitational waves:
● Gravitational
waves are defined as “ripples” in
space-time.
● The
strongest gravitational waves are produced by cataclysmic events such as colliding black holes, supernovae
(massive stars exploding at the end of their lifetimes), and colliding neutron
stars.
Detection:
● Gravitational waves are washing over Earth
all the time, but instruments have not
been sensitive enough to detect them until very recently.
● The gravitational waves were first seen last
year by the ground-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Features:
● They
are caused by the acceleration of
massive objects.
● They
are moving at the speed of light without
being scattered significantly.
● They
are extremely weak so are very difficult
to detect.
Significance:
● These
waves will be particularly useful for studying
black holes (the existence of which was first implied by Einstein’s theory)
and other dark objects, because
they’ll give scientists a bright beacon to search for even when objects don’t
emit actual light.
● With
this, mapping the abundance of black holes and frequency of their mergers could
get a lot easier.
● Since
they pass through matter without interacting with it, gravitational waves would
come to Earth carrying undistorted information about their origin.
● They
could also improve methods for estimating the distances to other galaxies.