While there is a small chance this is simply due to chance, it looks like the gamma ray burst was triggered by the merging black holes.
How Close Is Too Close?
What would happen if two black holes merged near our solar system? While the real answer is complex, we can do a back of the envelope calculation.
Why Does Gravity Wave, And Why Does It Matter?
What are gravitational waves, and why is their detection such a big deal?
A Trick Of Gravity
General relativity warps space and time, and astronomers can use that fact to their advantage.
Precision Falling
One of the major problems with LIGO is that it is ground based. Any vibration of the ground, such as a truck driving on a road miles away, can cause noise in the signal. A better alternative would be to put the LIGO project in space. This is the idea behind the Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (eLISA)
Is Gravity Quantized?
We’re approaching the point where “quantum gravity” experiments could be made.
A Lens Bigger Than A Galaxy
Astronomers have used a lens bigger than a galaxy to observe the faintest and youngest galaxies ever found.
Joseph Weber And The Failed Search For Gravitational Waves
Gravitational waves are the last great prediction of general relativity to be directly observed. According to Einstein’s theory of gravity, a mass in motion creates ripples in space and time. Ripples caused by large masses like binary neutron stars or black holes should be large enough for us to detect across light years. But despite recent rumors, no gravitational waves have been detected so far.
Lagrange’s Gravitational Dance
Joseph-Louis Lagrange first studied the complexities of gravitational motion in the late 1700s.