Gravitational Waves – Listening to Spacetime

A century ago, Einstein predicted that violent events in space should send ripples through the fabric of spacetime itself — and in 2015, after decades of effort, we finally felt one pass by. This episode explains what gravitational waves are, how we detect something almost impossibly faint, and why they’ve given astronomy a completely new sense.

You’ll come away understanding what it means for space and time to ripple, how two colliding black holes can shake the universe, how instruments detect a stretch far smaller than an atom, and why this has opened a brand-new way of observing the cosmos.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: LIGO Scientific Collaboration – public pages; Australian National University / OzGrav – gravitational-wave research; Janna Levin, Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space.