Detection of gravitational waves, the holy grail of physics – Times

Ed. Print NEW WINDOW TO UNDERSTANDING THE UNIVERSE

Detection of gravitational waves, the Holy Grail of physics. – AFP

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More than the Higgs boson, the detection of gravitational waves, which could be announced today by an international team of scientists, it is considered the Holy Grail of physics, because it opens a new window to understanding of the universe and its most violent phenomena.

the observation of these waves, whose existence Albert Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity in 1915, it will be the subject of a presentation today in Washington, according to a statement from the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States.

Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), MIT and the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), working for 15 years in the detection of these waves, they will participate in the press conference.

at the same time, will be held press conferences at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris and London.

the announcement of this presentation fed rumors circulating for several weeks in the scientific community, according to which teams LIGO able to detect these waves for the first time.

gravitational waves are produced by light perturbations in the fabric of space-time due to the effect of the displacement of a massive object, such as black holes or neutron stars.

This theory proposed by Einstein can be compared to the waves that form in water when a stone is thrown, or deformation of a network in which one rests one foot. In this image, the network would spacetime.

According to these rumors, it was thanks to the observation of the collision and merger of two black holes that this discovery was made.

the online version of the journal Science quoted Clifford Burgess (a physicist at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and a member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics), according to whom the rumor is plausible but has not had access to the . documents LIGO

the ability to observe gravitational waves, which are very dim on a microscopic scale, open a new window on astronomical phenomena that are still a mystery: the gravitational collapse of massive stars, fusion two neutron stars and phenomena associated with black holes, which often are at the center of galaxies.

“gravity is the main force of the Universe” and their effects on spacetime produce gravitational waves that propagate throughout the cosmos, “said Tuck Stebbins, head of the gravitational Astrophysics laboratory at NASA.

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