Gravity Waves really do exist.

To Boldy go….

It has been an exciting if rather baffling week as one of Einstein’s theories has been proven experimentally.

We now know that Gravity Waves really do exist.  Gravity waves are created by events or objects.  It is like a large ship on the sea creating waves but of course, we will miss smaller vessels carried on its wake and the picture will be confusing in a busy shipping channel and therein will lie some of the new challenges.

Gravity waves are unaffected by anything  once created and so the gravity wave from the big bang, for example, will still exist.

We might find out what has happened since the universe began and effectively what it has looked like.  Gravity waves also distort the place we live called `spacetime’ especially where there are immense gravitational fields such as around black holes.  They cannot move faster than the speed of light but they seem to affect light because light looks like it bends around black holes (but in reality still goes straight) because space-time is changed.

Space and Time seem distinct to us but in fact they are not entirely in cosmic terms. The universe is enormous to see but also stretches back and forward in time beyond our human comprehension.

Those of us that enjoyed `Star Trek’, see the massive potential of this news.  If space is `warped’ by blackholes sending out waves, could, for example, something travel on the curved wave to reach another place or time?  Could we create a wave or `Warp speed’ as they called in Star Trek?   Probably not, is the answer given the size of the waves.  However, it would be something amazing in the meanwhile just to look back and see what happened. 

Enjoy the future and the past in one, this week.

 

 

“Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.  Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”  –  Captain James T. Kirk