Professors and graduate students from Washington State University were among more than 1,000 researchers involved in the worldwide effort to detect gravitational waves and confirm Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
The announcement came Thursday that researchers had recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light years away, using massive L-shaped antennae in Hanford and Livingston, Louisiana. They claim to have detected a ripple in space-time that was emitted as the two black holes approached and rapidly circled one another, violently merging into one.
That fleeting chirp was “a dramatic confirmation of Einstein’s theory,” said Matt McCluskey, chairman of WSU’s physics and astronomy department. “WSU is on the ground floor of this new enterprise, this new era.”
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