Scientists have now observed gravitational waves

[Oniya]

It took two black holes colliding to get the data, but Einstein has once again been proved correct.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/11/466286219/in-milestone-scientists-detect-waves-in-space-time-as-black-holes-collide

[Inkidu]

They've been observing gravitational waves between neutron stars for a while now, that's why I'm a little confused as to why this is a big deal. Now those were... I want to say low-frequency and these might be high frequency. I mean, there was a scientist who was getting mostly ignored who was trying to pitch the idea of a gravitational wave transmitter (it would allow us to map the core of the Earth without doubt or speculation).

Astrophysicists have accepted that gravitational waves happen out there, naturally all the time.

EDIT: I did a little more paper reading and this was a direct observation, kudos, Science! :D

[Dice]

The shit scientists do with these kinds of experiments is nuts. I one was told of a iron sphere that was supercooled so it would no longer vibrate as the sub atomic level (lowing it to near 0 Kelven) so when the sun spits flares at us we can measure the change in gravity with lasers on this sphere. These guys amaze me.

[Inkidu]

Well from what I understand how they did it was that there is this L-shaped apparatus that has two lasers that shoot beams into a receiver. When the gravitational waves pass through the apparatus it will pull one side of the apparatus closer than the other and not only that, but the laser will travel at different rates of speed through gravitational waves. So they're measuring the speed of the laser because light will travel differently through this event.

There are two of them they cost a billion dollars a piece, and they were close to being scrapped for not getting results.