Breakthrough: Scientists detect Einstein's gravity ripples

[joeybee12]

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an announcement that electrified the world of physics, scientists said Thursday that they have finally detected gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

Astronomers hailed the finding as an achievement of historic proportions, one that opens the door to a new way of observing the universe and the violent collisions that are constantly shaping it. For them, it's like turning a silent movie into a talkie because these waves are the soundtrack of the cosmos in action.

"Until this moment, we had our eyes on the sky and we couldn't hear the music," said Columbia University astrophysicist Szabolcs Marka, a member of the discovery team. "The skies will never be the same."

http://news.yahoo.com/breakthrough-scientists-detect-einstein-predicted-ripples-154314697.html

[Eleanors38]

1. Holy Smokes! And he's been dead for decades!

[SoLeftIAmRight]

2. "detect" much better headline than "discover"

but some here do not get it

Einstein predicted

Joseph Taylor and Russell Hulse confirmed

now people have built a "scale" so we can now "weigh" them

Three great things

[leftstreet]

3. DURec

[MagickMuffin]

4. K&R Off to the Greatest

Thx for the info!

[truedelphi]

5. If only reading the article helped me understand -

Gravitational waves, first theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916 as part of his theory of general relativity, are extraordinarily faint ripples in space-time, the hard-to-fathom fourth dimension that combines time with the familiar up, down, left and right. When massive objects like black holes or neutron stars collide, they send gravitational waves across the universe, stretching space-time or causing it to bunch up like a fishing net.

####

I mean, I understand what they did, I just don't understand the WHOLE BIG PICTURE.

And sometimes when I don't understand something, I understand enough to ask a question, but this is beyond me.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. That's worth a song.

[msanthrope]

7. Time tracks in space. nt

[Rex]

8. So now we know what to blame for the ripples in time.

Most suspected it was gravitons.

[hifiguy]

9. I wonder how many Nobels have been and will continue to be won

based on Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity? Every test of Einstein's predictions has resulted in their validation for the last 100 years.

If there was a more brilliant thinker in human history I have no idea who it could be.

[Rex]

10. Maybe Stephen Hawking.

But yeah...Einstein was a one of a kind, like Leonardo Da Vinci.

[cpwm17]

11. Isaac Newton is often considered the top scientist of all time

with Einstein as number two. Darwin is certainly worth a mention.