GRAVITATIONAL
WAVES: A NEW
WAY TO OBSERVE
THE UNIVERSE

We know a lot about how gravity behaves, but very little about what gravity actually is. That’s what makes any gravity-related discovery extremely exciting.

One such source of excitement occurred in September 2015, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (or LIGO for short) made the first-ever detection of a gravitational wave – something Einstein had theorised about one hundred years earlier.

Detecting gravitational waves gives astronomers a new way to observe the universe and gain insights into things we’ve already been studying for a long time - not least, a better understanding of gravity itself!

But what makes detection so complicated? And where do lasers come in?