{"id":21766,"date":"2016-02-08T10:47:11","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T18:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/what-are-gravitational-waves-and-why-do-they-matter"},"modified":"2017-06-04T10:58:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T17:58:47","slug":"what-are-gravitational-waves-and-why-do-they-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2016\/02\/what-are-gravitational-waves-and-why-do-they-matter","title":{"rendered":"What Are Gravitational Waves And Why Do They Matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MTY1Kje0yLg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Physicists have been buzzing (or rather, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/physicist-tweets-rumor-that-gravitational-waves-may-have-finally-been-detected\">tweeting<\/a>) about the possibility that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment finally discovered gravitational waves. LIGO has been searching for these cosmic ripples for over a decade. Last September, it upgraded to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.advancedligo.mit.edu\/\">Advanced-LIGO<\/a>, a more sensitive system that\u2019s also better at filtering out noise. Advanced-LIGO has a much stronger chance of collecting concrete evidence of gravitational waves\u2014if it hasn\u2019t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/physicist-tweets-rumor-that-gravitational-waves-may-have-finally-been-detected\">already<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists may be excited, but talk of gravitational waves leaves most people scratching their heads. What are these cosmic vibrations, and why are they making waves in the scientific community?<\/p>\n<p><b>What are gravitational waves?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Gravitational waves are disturbances in the fabric of spacetime. If you drag your hand through a still pool of water, you\u2019ll notice that waves follow in its path, and spread outward through the pool. According to Albert Einstein, the same thing happens when heavy objects move through spacetime.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/whats-so-important-about-gravitational-waves?src=SOC&dom=tw\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Physicists have been buzzing (or rather, tweeting) about the possibility that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment finally discovered gravitational waves. LIGO has been searching for these cosmic ripples for over a decade. Last September, it upgraded to Advanced-LIGO, a more sensitive system that\u2019s also better at filtering out noise. Advanced-LIGO has a much [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62968,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21766\/revisions\/62968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}