After decades of searching, scientists Thursday announced they have directly detected gravitational waves for the first time, caused by a cosmic clash of black holes so violent that its shock waves rippled the ethereal fabric of space and time across a
After decades of searching, scientists Thursday announced they have directly detected gravitational waves for the first time, caused by a cosmic clash of black holes so violent that its shock waves rippled the ethereal fabric of space and time across a
As gravitational waves pass through the Earth (and now we know for sure they must be doing this all the time) they distort distances, compressing them in one direction while stretching them in the perpendicular direction. The experiment measures the
The gravitational waves — ripples in space-time — were created by the merging of two black holes, Reitze said. One black hole had the mass of 29 suns; the other was the equivalent of 36 suns. Each was perhaps 50 kilometers (30 miles) in diameter.
Three decades before international scientists announced they have detected the gravitational waves Albert Einstein had proposed, a young scientist was already talking about the idea. Sanjeev Dhurandhar's ideas were then greeted with incredulity but, on