Gravitational Waves Could Bring Revolutionary Changes To Astronomy, Hopes Stephen Hawking
The scientific community worldwide, particularly those dealing with Physics and Astronomy, have been pretty excited ever since last week's historic announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Justifiably so, after all, predicted long back by Albert Einstein, the discovery of gravitational waves could potentially pave the way for many previously unsolved mysteries about the Universe.
Adding more to the celebration, the iconic British physicist and black-hole theorist Stephen Hawking has also joined the bandwagon by calling the commendable achievement by LIGO a big leap in the field of astronomy.
"These results confirm several very important predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity," Stephen Hawking said in a BBC interview. "It confirms the existence of gravitational waves directly."
While the nitty-gritty of the implications brought in by LIGO's discovery is rather complicated, it is a matter of common knowledge that not only this groundbreaking scientific work proves Einstein's famous theory of General Relativity, but it also allows a glimpse into the "dark" Universe that humanity was, by and large, oblivious of.
Simply put, the existing methodologies used by astrophysicists and cosmologists use only the electromagnetic spectrum (comprising visible light, gamma ray, infrared, X-rays and so on).
Despite being a handy way to observe the Universe, these methodologies also have some inherent imperfections. For example, objects that don't radiate energy in the electromagnetic spectrum is bound to remain unnoticed.
However, now that scientists have found that gravitational waves are a part of the fabric of reality, a paradigm shift in the way we detect and study the most energetic phenomena in the grand cosmos could soon follow.
"Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the universe," Stephen Hawking explained. "The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy.
