How Do We Find Gravitational Waves?

A simulation of two merging supermassive black holes. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

On the 14th of September 2015, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detector made the first-ever direct detection of a gravitational wave signal, produced by the merger of two black holes. Just two years later, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astronomers who made significant contributions to this discovery.