Gravitational Waves

Ripples in spacetime

An interactive lesson with 6 steps, about 5 minutes: you predict, drag and solve, with instant feedback on every answer. It runs in your browser and needs JavaScript.

What you’ll learn

• Accelerating masses emit gravitational waves at the speed of light.
• LIGO first detected them in 2015, from merging black holes.
• Their effect is incredibly small: about a thousandth of a proton’s width over 4 km.

Steps

1. Hearing spacetime
2. The chirp
3. A tiny wobble
4. Three Suns of energy
5. Twice the orbit
6. Two detectors