Ripples in the fabric of space, called gravitational waves, are careening across the universe, right through everything and everyone.
And apparently there are a lot of them.
On Wednesday, scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment announced the second-ever detection of gravitational waves— a feat Einstein thought impossible 100 years ago — emanating from two colliding black holes.
"It confirms — it super-confirms — that these events are not flukes," astrophysicist Vicky Kalogera, who has been working with LIGO to analyze the signals, told Tech Insider. "They're happening in nature and we can detect them every few months." This summer, Kalogera thinks LIGO may find 10 or more new gravitational waves, and possibly up to 100 a year later on.
Tech Insider spoke with Imre Bartos, also a physicist working with LIGO, and other researchers earlier this year about the "revolutionary" new era of astronomy they say has begun.
Here are just a handful of formerly impossible things astronomers could do with gravitational waves.
One killer application is to reveal supernovas — huge, exploding stars that seed the universe with elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen — hours before they're visible to telescopes.
"Gravitational waves arrive at Earth long before any light does," Bartos said. The reason is that the star gets in the way of itself.
"All of this stuff tries to come out, including light, but it bumps into the star's matter and gets stuck until the whole star collapses. But gravitational waves can pass right through."
See the rest of the story at INSIDER