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SCIENCEFriday 12 February 2016
Breakthrough: Scientists detect Einstein-predicted ripples
SETH BORENSTEIN Hebrew University’s Roni Gross holds the original historical doc- hay Ashtekar, who wasn’t verse,” said team member
AP Science Writer uments related to Albert Einstein’s prediction of the existence part of the discovery team. Chad Hanna of Pennsylva-
WASHINGTON (AP) — In an of gravitational waves at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem, “Our understanding of the nia State University.
announcement that elec- Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016. heavens changed dramat- Detecting gravitational
trified the world of astrono- ically.” waves is so difficult that
my, scientists said Thursday Associated Press Gravitational waves, first when Einstein first theorized
that they have finally de- theorized by Albert Einstein about them, he figured sci-
tected gravitational waves, sity astrophysicist Szabolcs servatory, or LIGO, to de- in 1916 as part of his theory entists would never be able
the ripples in the fabric of Marka, a member of the tect a gravitational wave of general relativity, are to hear them. Einstein later
space-time that Einstein discovery team. “The skies from the distant crash of extraordinarily faint ripples doubted himself and even
predicted a century ago. will never be the same.” two black holes, one of the in space-time, the hard-to- questioned in the 1930s
Some scientists likened the An all-star international ways these ripples are cre- fathom fourth dimension whether they really do ex-
breakthrough to the mo- team of astrophysicists used ated. that combines time with ist, but by the 1960s scien-
ment Galileo took up a a newly upgraded and ex- To make sense of the raw the familiar up, down, left tists had concluded they
telescope to look at the cruciatingly sensitive $1.1 data, the scientists translat- and right. When massive probably do, Ashtekar said.
planets. billion instrument known as ed the wave into sound. At but compact objects like In 1979, the National Sci-
The discovery of these the Laser Interferometer a news conference, they black holes or neutron stars ence Foundation decided
waves, created by violent Gravitational-Wave Ob- played what they called collide, they send gravity to give money to the Cali-
collisions in the universe, a “chirp” — the signal they ripples across the universe. fornia Institute of Technol-
excites astronomers be- heard on Sept. 14. It was Scientists found indirect ogy and the Massachusetts
cause it opens the door to barely perceptible even proof of the existence of Institute of Technology to
a new way of observing when enhanced. gravitational waves in the come up with a way to de-
the cosmos. For them, it’s Some physicists said the 1970s — computations that tect the waves.
like turning a silent movie finding is as big a deal as showed they ever so slightly Twenty years later, they
into a talkie because these the 2012 discovery of the changed the orbits of two started building two LIGO
waves are the soundtrack subatomic Higgs boson, colliding stars — and the detectors in Hanford, Wash-
of the cosmos. sometimes called the “God work was honored as part ington, and Livingston,
“Until this moment we had particle.” Some said this is of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Louisiana, and they were
our eyes on the sky and bigger. physics. But Thursday’s an- turned on in 2001. But after
we couldn’t hear the mu- “It’s really comparable nouncement was a direct years with no luck, scientists
sic,” said Columbia Univer- only to Galileo taking up detection of a gravitational realized they had to build a
the telescope and looking wave. more advanced detection
at the planets,” said Penn And that’s considered a system, which was turned
State physics theorist Ab- big difference. on last September.
“It’s one thing to know “This is truly a scientific
soundwaves exist, but it’s moonshot and we did it.
another to actually hear We landed on the moon,”
Beethoven’s Fifth Sympho- said David Reitze, LIGO’s
ny,” said Marc Kamionkow- executive director.
si, a physicist at Johns Hop- The new LIGO in some fre-
kins University who wasn’t quencies is three times
part of the discovery team. more sensitive than the old
“In this case we’re actually one and is able to detect
getting to hear black holes ripples at lower frequencies
merging.” that the old one couldn’t.
Gravitational waves are And more upgrades are
the “soundtrack of the uni- planned.q
