“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~ Albert Einstein

 

Thank you, Dr. Einstein, for always questioning. Thanks to a team of physicists who also embraced questions, Einstein’s space-time theory is finally confirmed. According to The New York Times today,

 

A team of physicists who can now count themselves as astronomers announced on Thursday that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away, a fleeting chirp that fulfilled the last prophecy of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

That faint rising tone, physicists say, is the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago. And it is a ringing (pun intended) confirmation of the nature of black holes, the bottomless gravitational pits from which not even light can escape, which were the most foreboding (and unwelcome) part of his theory.

More generally, it means that scientists have finally tapped into the deepest register of physical reality, where the weirdest and wildest implications of Einstein’s universe become manifest.

 

While this is particularly cool news for science buffs and/or Big Bang Theory fans (like The Mr. and me), it’s also interesting news for a generation who’s heard about Dr. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as a scientific construct. Wondering what black holes are and why they’re so ‘foreboding’?

Check out this trailer for Interstellar, a 2014 fictional movie about black holes, but with ‘an amazingly accurate view of a black hole,’ says its creators.   

 

Prefer a more scientific perspective? Check out this documentary on YouTube:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk8CxK0SJu4

 

Scary AND exciting stuff, don’t you think??