Nearly everything we know about the universe comes from electromagnetic radiation—that is, light. Astronomy began with visible light and then expanded to the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum. By using the spectrum, from the short wavelengths of gamma rays to the long wavelengths of radio waves, astronomers have discovered strange and wondrous things. Now a new form of astronomy, gravitational-wave astronomy, has come. It watches not light but movements in space-time. Along with the new astronomy has come a new kind of observatory, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).
Gravitational Waves Are Ripples in Space-Time
According to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, gravity is not a force reaching out through the universe. It’s a bending of space-time. When an object accelerates, it distorts the space-time around it, and that distortion travels away from the source at the speed of light.
Gravitational Waves Come from Really Heavy Objects
So how massive an object are we talking about? The first proof that gravitational waves actually exist came from a binary pulsar—two neutron stars, each about the mass of the Sun, that orbit each other. The pulsars’ orbit is gradually shrinking, so the pulsars are losing energy. That energy is exactly the amount that general relativity predicts that the pulsars would give off in gravitational waves.
The Effect of Gravitational Waves Is Very, Very Small
Since gravitational waves are a ripple in space-time, they cause the distance between two points to change ever so slightly. How slightly? LIGO must be able to measure distances as small as 10−19 meter. The proton has a radius of about 0.85 × 10−15 meter, or 10,000 times larger.
Measuring Gravitational Waves Is Tricky
To detect a change in distance much smaller than the proton requires great precision. Each LIGO installation is a laser interferometer made up of two underground pipes, each 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) wide and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, set in an L-shape. The inside of the pipes is a vacuum. When a gravitational wave passes through LIGO, one arm of the instrument gets longer and the other gets shorter. A laser beam is split in half, sent down the two pipes, reflected back, and then recombined so the two beams cancel each other out in destructive interference if there is no gravitational wave. If there is a gravitational wave, the beams won’t cancel each other out. A 4-km long beam is still not enough to detect a gravitational wave, so the beams are bounced back and forth about 400 times so the light travels a distance of 1,600 km (1,000 miles).
LIGO Is Very Sensitive
LIGO detects such a small change in distance that it can detect a lot of other vibrations too. For example, the speed limit at LIGO is 16 km (10 miles) per hour to minimize vibrations from nearby cars. One source of noise is gravity gradient noise, which is the minute change in Earth’s gravitational field when a vibration passes through the ground near the mirrors. The mirrors that reflect the light weigh 40 kg (88 pounds) and hang by silica fibers in a complex suspension system. To make sure that LIGO does detect gravitational waves and not just passing cars, there are two LIGO installations—one in Livingston, Louisiana, and the other in Hanford, Washington. A gravitational wave would show up at both installations.
Gravitational-Wave Astronomy Can See an Entirely New Side of the Universe
If supermassive black holes (black holes one million times more massive than the Sun) merged in a distant galaxy, LIGO could observe it. Scientists also expect that if a neutron star is slightly nonspherical, the gravitational waves could be observed and thus reveal much about the star’s structure. Every time astronomers have been able to look at the universe in a new way, they’ve always observed something unexpected, and gravitational-wave astronomy will likely show something not yet thought of.