Gravitational waves for everyone

A few weeks ago I was in the mouth of all the new discoveries about gravitational waves. Today we look at are and see what can be in the field of physics and Astrophysics:

Gravitational waves

What are? They are concentric ripples that shrink and stretch the 'fabric' of space-time while traveling at the speed of light. They arise from very violent events, such as the merger of two black holes. This would be the case of the first detected gravitational wave: GW150914.

Who was the first in thinking in them? The existence of these waves predicted Albert Einstein a century ago. Are consequence of his general theory of relativity, where arises that space-time is curved and that objects with mass very accelerated change the curvature of the spacetime and produce gravitational waves.

Have you spotted when and where? The 14 September 2015 at 11:51 (European summer time) by two twin detectors of the Laser interferometric gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO, for its acronym in English), in the United States.

Is it the first time that they have been? Although scientists had already deduced its existence, until now not had been able to detect directly. For more than 50 years that various experiments throughout the world (such as LIGO VIRGO in Europe and USA) have tried to get the experimental proof. Has been very difficult find them since their amplitudes are extremely small and the large events that the produce are little frequent. Although they are caused by the movement of the mass, most are so weak that they have no measurable effect.

Why are gravitational waves such tenuous? When violent cosmic events occur, they cause the fabric of space to vibrate like a drum. The ripples of space-time they emanate in all directions, traveling at the speed of light and physically distorting everything in its path. But the more these waves of their origin move away, become smaller. A distortion of the initial in the space of several kilometres caused by them is reduced to only a fraction of the size of the proton when it reaches the Earth.

How have they been detected? So that current technology has been able to detect it have had to search those - still extremely tenuous - radiated through the cosmos from extremely violent events, such as the explosions of stars and collisions of black holes. Only laboratories as LIGO, equipped with instruments laser of ultra-precision, are capable of detect them through the tiny disturbances that cause in them beams of light of their detectors.

Not there was already an ad on these waves makes a couple of years? In 2014, the telescope BICEP2 team announced have discovered a special type of gravitational waves: the primitive that emerged after the Big Bang. The footprint left on so-called radiation (CMB) CMB is what is supposed observed that telescope from Antarctica. But the data from the satellite Planck confirmed that those results not had in has the dust Galactic, by what not were valid. Short-term LIGO does not have the ability to detect these primordial gravitational waves, so it will have to continue relying on instruments such as BICEP2.

Of what is worth having detected finally waves gravitational? These waves provide information about the objects that produce them, the most violent events in the universe as supernovae or collisions and mergers of black holes and neutron stars. Its detection opens the universe completely new research, as well as pave the way for the Nobel its discoverers.

Source: www.agenciasinc.es

I leave you some books on physics related.