Scientists might have discovered the first signs of the gravitational-wave background: a sea of ripples in space-time reverberating throughout the universe.
Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of gravitational waves. They have recently been detected following violent collisions of black holes and neutron stars.
By monitoring dead stars throughout our galaxy, scientists found a signal that could be a steady thrum of gravitational waves radiating from distant galaxies as supermassive black holes collide.
Scientists may be on the brink of discovering a new phenomenon reverberating throughout the cosmos: a steady thrum of ripples in space-time.
Albert Einstein first predicted that colliding massive objects like black holes would create such ripples, called gravitational waves. But he thought that the noise and vibrations on Earth would prevent us from ever being able to detect these waves. In that aspect, Einstein was wrong. One of the most remarkable experiments in history — the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) — detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015.