Explaining the groundbreaking discovery of gravitational waves and their detection for beginners

3. Ripples or Oscillations in space time
Travel at the speed of light
Comes from very massive objects
Strength of waves ∝ 1 / distance from the source
It can penetrate regions of space that electromagnetic waves
cannot

4. SUPERNOVAE AND STARS COLLAPSE INTO NEUTRON
STAR
TWO BLACK HOLES COLLIDING OR ORBITING EACH
OTHER
NEUTRON STAR ORBITING A BLACK HOLE
A ROTATING NEUTRON STAR
COLLIDING GALAXIES

5. Astronomical event that occurs during the last
stellar evolutionary stages of a massive star's life

6. BLACK HOLE
A region of space-time exhibiting such strong gravitational effects.
Sufficiently compact mass can deform space-time to form a black hole.

7. Interacting galaxies (colliding galaxies) are galaxies whose gravitational fields result
in a disturbance of one another

8. Neutron stars are created when giant stars die in supernovas and their cores collapse,
with the protons and electrons essentially melting into each other to form neutrons.

9. How will we detect gravitational
waves?

11. Follow the beam: schematic showing a LIGO
interferometer

13. CHANGE IN LENGTH OF LIGO’S ARM

14. Detected on September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC
−
B. P. Abbott et al
PHYSICALREVIEW LETTERS
116, 061102 (2016)

15. WHY STUDY GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Can accurately determine cosmological distances.
Instrument made for gravitational wave detection is the most
precise measuring system ever.
Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging branch of
observational astronomy which aims to use gravitational waves to
collect observational data Such as neutron stars and black holes

16. GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
• weak force
• has only one sign of charge.
• generated by the bulk motion of large
masses, and will have wavelengths
much longer than the objects
themselves
• Gravitational charge is equivalent to
inertia.
• difficult to detect
• they can travel unhindered through
intervening matter of any density or
composition
ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES
• Stronger force
• comes in two opposing signs of charge.
• typically generated by small
movements of charge pairs within
objects, and have wavelengths much
smaller than the objects themselves.
• charge is unrelated to inertia.
• easy to detect
• readily absorbed or scattered by
intervening matter.

17. • To prove the existence of the gravitational waves by
direct measurements
• Confirm that Gravitational waves travel at the speed of
light
• Verify that gravitational waves cause disturbances of
predicted amounts in the matter they pass through
• Learn more about black holes
• Expand knowledge about universe