What is continuous gravitational wave? Continuous gravitational waves are produced by systems that have a fairly constant and well-defined frequency. Examples of these are binary sytems of stars or black holes orbiting each other (long before merger), or a single star...
How does LIGO detect gravitational waves? How are gravitational waves detected? When a gravitational wave passes by Earth, it squeezes and stretches space. LIGO can detect this squeezing and stretching. Each LIGO observatory has two “arms” that are each more than...
How were gravitational waves detected? In 2015, scientists detected gravitational waves for the very first time. They used a very sensitive instrument called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). These first gravitational waves happened when two black holes crashed into one another....
How do you explain gravitational waves? “Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime. When objects move, the curvature of spacetime changes and these changes move outwards (like ripples on a pond) as gravitational waves. A gravitational wave is a stretch and squash...
How does the LIGO detector work? Gravitational waves cause space itself to stretch in one direction and simultaneously compress in a perpendicular direction. In LIGO, this causes one arm of the interferometer to get longer while the other gets shorter, then...
What are the implications of gravitational waves? From even the distance of the nearest star, gravitational waves would pass through us almost completely unnoticed. Although these ripples in spacetime carry more energy than any other cataclysmic event, the interactions are so...
How is gravitational wave detected? In 2015, scientists detected gravitational waves for the very first time. They used a very sensitive instrument called LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory). These first gravitational waves happened when two black holes crashed into one another....
Did Einstein believe in gravitational waves? Einstein soon hit on the correct formulation, but two decades later he rejected the physical reality of gravitational waves, and he remained skeptical about them for the rest of his life. Like most scientific concepts,...
What are gravitational waves explain? “Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime. When objects move, the curvature of spacetime changes and these changes move outwards (like ripples on a pond) as gravitational waves. A gravitational wave is a stretch and squash of...
How do gravitational waves affect the Earth? From even the distance of the nearest star, gravitational waves would pass through us almost completely unnoticed. Although these ripples in spacetime carry more energy than any other cataclysmic event, the interactions are so...