A hundred years ago this year, in 1916. This is a huge discovery, not only confirming Einstein’s ideas, but opening a whole new way of exploring the universe.
Gravitational wave is actually a ripple in the fabric of space. Wwe know you throw a pebble into a pond, the water ripples, right? Now, this is a ripple, but not with water. It’s in space itself.
What happened is, this is 1915. He didn’t just stop. He keeps going, and a year later he realizes if space is like a trampoline, then imagine kids running around on a trampoline. They’re going to send ripples on the surface. So he says the same should be true of the fabric of space. If you’ve qot two rapidly orbiting stars, neutron stars or black holes, his math predicts that they will generate a steady march of ripples in the fabric of space. Those are gravitational waves that he predicted mathematically.
