Gravitational Waves Detected, Creating "New Means Of Observing The Universe"

Today scientists have announced the confirmed existence of gravitational waves, providing proof for one of Albert Einstein's most elusive predictions. These gravitational waves open a door to new scientific discoveries innumerable, showing ripples in the fabric of space and time in a way previously thought impossible. Ironically – sort of – this year also marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's publication of his prediction of the existence of these gravitational waves, all the way back in 1915.See SlashGear's new gravitational waves portal for more information on this epic event.

In 1915, Einstein published his general theory of relativity, in which he hypothesized that gravitational waves could exist. Back then, he believed that these waves might've been too tiny to be able to physically prove.

ABOVE: Artist's illustration showing gravitational waves generated by merging black holes. Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions

"Einstein thought gravitational waves were too weak to detect, and didn't believe in black holes. But I don't think he'd have minded being wrong!" – Bruce Allen, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)

In 1916 Karl Schwarzschild published a paper on what would eventually be understood to describe black holes. In 1963, Roy Kerr used these solutions found earlier in the century to hypothesize rotating black holes.

In 1974, Joseph Taylor, Jr. and Russell Hulse discovered a binary system composed of a pulsar in orbit around a neutron star. It was in this discovery that Taylor and Joel M. Weisberg, in 1982, found a shrinking orbit, showing then that it was made possible by gravitational waves.

Here in 2015 it's been announced that scientists have made the first observation of gravitational waves themselves.

Gravitational waves are no longer a theory.

Gravitational waves are detected, measured, proven.

"Our observations provide unique access to the properties of space-time in the strong-field, high-velocity regime and confirm predictions of general relativity for the nonlinear dynamics of highly disturbed black holes." – B. P. Abbott et al.

These waves were successfully detected on September 14, 2015 at 5:51 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (09:51 UTC). The detection was made by both of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington, USA, both operated by Caltech and MIT.

This detection was made by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (which includes the GEO Collaboration and the Australian Consortium for Interferometric Gravitational Astronomy) and the Virgo Collaboration using data from the two LIGO detectors, and the subsequent scientific paper was accepted for publication in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

You can also learn more about this subject by reading the scientific paper "Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger" as published by Physical Review Letters on the 11th of February, 2016. This paper was authored by B. P. Abbott et al. (LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration), and can be found with code DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102.