A year ago, Einstein's greatest mystery was revealed. Scientists were able to see a strange flash inside the two giant L-shaped instruments that they could hardly believe. This was the first evidence of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space that pass through all of its objects.
Einstein first predicted the existence of these waves 100 years ago, however, the famous scientist doubted that anyone would be able to detect them.
Incredible discoveries
However, scientists from the LIGO observatory were able to detect these cosmic echoes on September 14, 2015. All thanks to a grand collision of two black holes, which are located at a distance of 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The discovery was announced on February 11, 2016, after months of exhaustive verification.
Then, in June 2016, the LIGO team of 900 scientists announced their second find last December. They found evidence that these events are not trematodes. They occur naturally and can be observed every few months.
Scientists believe that with the help of new technologies they will be able to detect more than 10 new gravitational waves over the next year, and possibly another 100 a year later, with another experiment. This allows researchers at LIGO to say that a new revolutionary era of astronomy has begun.
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What previously impossible things can astronomers do with gravitational waves?
Supernova observation
One important application is to spot supernovae - huge exploding stars that seep the universe with elements such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen - before they can be seen with telescopes.
Gravitational waves arrive on Earth long before we can see light. The reason is that the star gets in its own way.
All of these things try to get out, including light, but crash into the star's matter and get stuck until all of it collapses. But gravitational waves can pass this barrier.
But it's not just that we can know about supernova explosions before we see it. (Although this possibility certainly seems very attractive).
Gravitational waves will reveal hidden boiling supernova cores. Now the only tools that can show what is happening inside the star are computer models.
The birth of black holes
But there is another unusual use of gravitational waves: we can hear black holes being born.
This happens deep inside supernovae, or when two ultra-dense dead stars, called neutron stars, merge together.
Such events cause gravitational waves to spill out in all directions at the speed of light.
Physicists also have no idea what structure black holes have. However, gravitational waves can emanate from their surface - this point of no return is called the event horizon.
The closest black hole object you can reach is gravitational waves. There shouldn't be any structures on the surface of black holes, but if there are, scientists could now detect it.
Unusual objects
Gravitational waves can also help scientists identify the most unusual and wild objects that the universe hides and that they could not detect before.
This includes a binary system of black holes - such as the one with which humanity was able to record gravitational waves for the first time using LIGO.
In the event that two black holes collide together, scientists can capture the pure energy of gravitational waves.
So far, scientists have no idea how many systems of double black holes lurk in the universe, which have fallen into the comic dance of death.
Scientists also don't know how many neutron stars remain in pairs or in orbit around a black hole. Gravitational waves can show when these objects collide and how often they do.
Exploring dark matter
In addition, there is also dark matter, which makes up about 80% of the Universe and which has never been detected. Its mass exceeds the mass of all stars and planets four times.
Scientists at NASA believe that gravitational waves could show that all this missing mass is actually a huge number of black holes that formed at the dawn of space and have not yet been discovered.
Other scientists argue that this theory is unlikely, but they cannot rule it out. Instead, they are betting on sensitive experiments that look for tiny, weakly interactive, massive particles.
Gravitational waves will also be able to detect objects deep in the Universe that scientists don't even know about.
You can be sure that big surprises await scientists soon. And, most likely, they will be much larger than anyone would expect.
Anna Pismenna