A discovery that shook the world
Having discovered the ripples of space-time; the gravitational waves, the Three American physicists Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, on the 3rd of October, 2017.
The decades-long collaboration involving a huge number of scientists around the world is definitely a success, also owing to the fact that this would lead to the dawn of a new field, the gravitational wave astronomy.
So what exactly are gravitational waves, and how are they created?
These are ripples produced by violent cosmic catacylsms which we observe as stiff fabric of space-time believed to have generated from collision between merging and fast-spinning black holes or exploding stars. Colliding black holes unleash a quite loud thunderclap of gravity. Gravitational waves alternately stretch and squeeze space along two axes, and they distort space-time by a very miniscule amount.
Why LIGO? Firstly, LIGO has 2 observatories that work in unison, in tandem. -Just from the two LIGO detectors, scientists can determine the mass of the black holes, how far away they are, roughly map where in the sky they are, and procure few details about the shape of their orbits. Despite being hard to detect the gravitational waves, these two LIGO ( Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave observatory) gravitational wave detectors in Hanford Washington and Livingston Louisiana , funded by the National Science Foundation, consisting of two enormous experiments and sensitive enough to detect a change in distance smaller than a width of a proton, had caught a second robust signal from two black holes in their final orbits and their coalescence into a single black hole, back in 2015. By listening in on these loud waves, the scientists are able to reconstruct the cataclysmic events that created them.
An aerial view of the LIGO gravitational wave detector in Livingston, Louisiana
It is only after keen, constant and patient efforts, keen research, and the scientific project, pioneering LIGO that made the gravitational wave detection feasible.
Is this confirming the start of a new era of astronomy? Certainly, yes. This discovery has fuelled curiosity, and attention of a number of scientists, and has in store; numerous phenomena/cosmic events, and intensive research in this field — the gravitational wave astronomy.
Detecting these gravitational waves will soon become a global affair. Last month, the National Science Foundation had signed an agreement with India that may bring a LIGO-like observatory to the country as soon as 2023. Japanese researchers are also working on an underground detector of their own, which may open as soon as 2018.
This illustration shows the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other.
“Gravitational waves contain information about their explosive origins and the nature of gravity that cannot be obtained from other astronomical signals. These observations have created the new field of gravitational wave astronomy”, says NSF foundations director, Cordova, in a news release. “The era of gravitational-wave astronomy is upon us,” says astronomer Scott of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. “I think it’s spectacular”.
This definitely marks the dawn of a new era, the field — Gravitational wave astronomy, and a whole lot of stupendous, and exciting facts and discoveries awaits us physics enthusiasts, who would be eager to learn new theories, analyze experiment results and try and decipher the intricate theories of the vast universe.
Looking forward to unravelling the mysterious secrets of the universe and enthusiastic to get hands on, and interpret new and upcoming theories.
To know more about LIGO, here are some useful links –
https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/faq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzZgFKoIfQI
