Source: RT
A century after physicist Albert Einstein first mooted the idea
of gravitational waves, US scientists have confirmed their existence.
Einstein proposed in 1916, through his Theory of General Relativity, that what we know as ‘gravitational pull’ is created by the distortion in space-time by mass or energy.Before today’s announcement, physical proof of the vibrations had been sought for decades by scientists who harbored hope of tracing waves which originated in the Big Bang - the creation of the universe.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration had been leading the research, operating detectors - known as interferometers - in the United States. The detectors work by splitting a laser beam between two perpendicular corridors 4km in length, bouncing them off mirrors at each end.
Without the presence of a gravitational wave, the beams should return to their source at exactly the same time.
But the presence of gravity waves would influence the beams differently: with stretching or squeezing of space-time from a gravity wave, the distance to the mirror is longer in one corridor and shorter in the other, meaning the light will not be in sync.
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