This story was originally published in our July/August 2022 issue as "Waves of Discovery." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
Gravitational-wave astronomy is growing up. These ripples in the fabric of space-time are created by accelerating masses, which then travel outward from their origin at the speed of light. While anything with mass can produce a gravitational wave (GW), only the biggest events are currently detectable: either from two black holes colliding, or two neutron stars smashing into each other, or a combination of the two.
The first GWs were detected in 2015 by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), when two black holes about 1.3 billion light-years away slammed into each other. LIGO consists of two interferometers — one in Louisiana, one in Washington state — which are L-shaped vacuum tunnels about 2.5 miles long on each side. A laser is shot from the ...
