阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦（Albert Einstein）在100年前的历史性相对论中著名地预测了这些浪潮的存在，但直到现在才赶上了技术。自2015年以来，物理学家通过检测11个事件（通过二元黑洞，二元中子星星1个）来巩固爱因斯坦的预测。
You can visualize gravitational waves as ripples that are generated on the surface of a pond after a stone is dropped in the middle — the stone represents the energy generated at the moment of collision between black holes (or neutron stars), and the pond's two-dimensional surface is a crude analogy of the three dimensions of space. The waves propagate at the speed of light and the more massive the colliding objects, the more energy is produced and therefore the more powerful the waves. As these waves ripple through our little corner of the universe, extremely sensitive gravitational wave interferometers (like LIGO and Virgo) can detect a minuscule space-time warp as the waves passthrough我们的星球。更重要的是，物理学家可以分析这些波，以破译碰撞物体的性质，例如它们的巨大程度和旋转的速度。
现在说引力波天文学是“常规的”还为时过早，但是随着在世界各地建造更多的观察者，我们会在精确的情况下变得更好theorigin of the waves (the location in the sky of the colliding massive objects) and picking up fainter (and therefore more distant and less energetic) events.
"In just one year, LIGO and VIRGO working together have dramatically advanced gravitational wave science, and the rate of discovery suggests the most spectacular findings are yet to come,"said Denise Caldwell在声明中。考德威尔（Caldwell）是国家科学基金会物理部的主任。
And, as we mentioned, some of these new discoveries will be record breakers, like GW170729, one of the newly announced signals that occurred on July 29, 2017. This signal was generated by the collision and merger of two black holes that created a single black hole80 timesthe mass of our sun. The smash-up happened in a distant galaxy approximately 5 billion years ago. This makes GW170729 the most massive和the most distant black hole merger detected yet.
Remember how we said the bigger the black holes, the more energetic their collision? In the process of colliding, this black hole smash-up converted five solar masses of black hole mass into pure energy. That's why the signal was powerful enough to echo through the universe, washing over Earth 5 billion years later. The other three new (smaller and closer) gravitational wave detections include signals that were all detected in 2017 on Aug. 9, 18 and 23 — they have been named GW170809, GW170818, and GW170823 respectively. These new detections are detailed intwo学习发表在预印式服务ARXIV上。
