Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time created by the interaction of massive objects in space, such as black holes and neutron stars. Their existence was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his 1916 paper describing his theory of general relativity. In 2015, scientists made the first detection of gravitational waves, observing ripples from the collision of two black holes. The discovery won astrophysicists Kip Thorne, Barry Baris and Rainer Weiss the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics. Subsequent observations have also detected gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars. Learn more about gravitational waves here.
Related Topics: Black Holes, Dark Matter, The Theory of Relativity in Space
Latest about gravitational waves
A mysterious hum of gravitational waves that fills the cosmos may be the echo of long-dead "dark stars" that served as the seeds of the first supermassive black holes.
"It doesn't require any new technology development, which is almost unheard of for solving a LIGO instrumentation problem."
The loudest crash of gravitational waves ever heard provides an intriguing way of studying event horizons, the boundaries at which nothing can escape the grip of these cosmic titans.
Black holes smashing together may churn dark matter "butter," scientists say.
Gravitational waves may have provided the first tantalizing evidence of tiny primordial black holes born during the Big Bang, which could account for dark matter.
The catalog of gravitational waves "heard" by LIGO, KAGRA and Virgo has doubled with detections of spacetime ripples.
Using gravitational waves as a measure of the universe's rate of expansion could solve the biggest headache in physics, the so-called "Hubble tension."
Flashes of gravitationally lensed starlight could act as cosmic lighthouses revealing the presence of binary supermassive black holes in close orbit.
