It is the
third time that scientists have detected gravitational waves --
ripples in space and time -- demonstrating that "a new window in
astronomy has been firmly opened."
The waves
were picked up by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave
Observatory(LIGO) on Jan. 4. They were generated when two black holes
collided to form a larger black hole billions of light-years away
from the earth, as was the case with the first two detections,
according to a research published on Thursday.
"We
have further confirmation of the existence of stellar-mass black
holes that are larger than 20 solar masses -- these are objects we
didn't know existed before LIGO detected them," says David
Shoemaker, spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. "It
is remarkable that humans can put together a story, and test it, for
such strange and extreme events that took place billions of years ago
and billions of light-years distant from us," he says.
"It
looks like Einstein was right -- even for this new event, which is
about two times farther away than our first detection," says
Laura Cadonati, the Deputy Spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific
Collaboration.
Gravitation
waves were predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago and
were detected for the first time in September 2015.
Source:
Comments
Post a Comment