Einstein Was Right!

No other discovery has been so impacting as that made by LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. Researches were able to detect gravitational waves,  the final of Einstein's predictions on his General Theory of Relativity.But what are these waves, really? And why are they so important?

Gravitational waves basically happen when mass moves. If you have something like a planet, for example, orbiting a star, this planet will produce small ripples in spacetime, like waves in the sea.This was predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago, and only now physicists were finally capable of proving it.
However, most of the celestial bodies produce “weak” effects with their gravitational waves -- too weak to be noticed. However, events like supernovae explosions and the creation of black holes produce waves so powerful that can affect bodies billion of kilometers away. LIGO, for example, captured waves from a pair of black holes no more than 1.3 billion light - years away.

Now that we understand what they are, it is time to ask: why are they so important?

First, they confirm one postulate, or part of General Relativity. This is extremely significant, because Relativity plays a vital role on modern technology and science. If it were wrong, we would have a big, big problem. There are, indeed, other recorded phenomena that prove relativistic effects, but only few are as conclusive as gravitational waves.

Also, this discovery opens a brand new way of unveiling the dark part of the universe. Now, we can detect “silent monsters” such as black holes measuring the disturbance caused by them in the tissue of space.

And we could go beyond “simply” detecting gravitational waves: we can use the information they carry about their source to catalog and detail what is still unknown about our cosmos.