Science News: Gravitational waves and new frontiers in astrophysics
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- Published: 2020/07/16
The existence of gravitational waves was first proposed by Albert Einstein in 1916. In his now well-known theory of relativity, Einstein showed that these waves, which can be thought of as disruptions or “ripples” in spacetime, occur due to the acceleration of extremely massive objects, such as black holes and neutron stars. However, while the behavior of binary pulsars has previously provided indirect evidence of these elusive waves, it was not until 2015, almost a century since Einstein’s original prediction, that gravitational waves were directly detected for the first time at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).