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Gravitation Waves Detected!

Date : 18/05/2017

Author Information

Ioannis

Uploaded by : Ioannis
Uploaded on : 18/05/2017
Subject : Physics

Science fiction? Nope, real life! But i am sure you have heard the news already. I mean, it`s everywhere! Many high school students will attempt to study physics in the university after this discovery, because it`s just a great time to be a physicist!

TWO enormous black holes, more massive than our Sun, located a billion light years away from us, they rotated one around the other with astonishingly large speeds (close to the speed of light) and collided/merged to create a single bigger black hole, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process equal to three solar masses!
>>PAUSE: Just sit there, and imagine, two stars like our Sun (because it`s easier to imagine a Sun, than black holes) rotating one around the other with nearly the speed of light. I know... It`s unimaginable...<<
This vast energy was released in the form of gravitational waves, a gravity distortion that propagated away from the black holes in empty space at the speed of light, deforming space-time on its way. This space-time deformation propagated through empty space for a billion years until it reached us, Earth, on September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC. Although initially powerful enough to destroy anything on their way, these gravitational waves got so weak after billions of years of propagation that, when reached us, they could deform space-time only in a tiny fraction of the radious of an _a t o m_...! Super-accurate detectors in the US were able to detect this tiny distortion, for the first time, on the date mentioned above. Below is the official research paper reporting on the discovery, and is open access for everyone to see (there are nice pictures for the non-physicists as well!).
I mean.. Come on.. Who wouldn`t want to be a physicist after this??
Also, i am not aware of a science fiction movie that uses the concept of gravitational waves. Therefore, for at least this time, real life has been proven even spookier than Hollywood.... : )

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PS #1: Here is an amazing cartoon-ish illustration and explanation of the newly discovered phenomenon of gravitational waves: The scientists that made the discovery have released a video which shows the event responsible for the gravitational waves detected on Sep 14 two black-holes rotating one around the other, as simulated by the real Einstein equations that describe gravity, leading to the final merging which released a powerful burst of gravitational waves.

This resource was uploaded by: Ioannis