Scientists were able to catch gravitational waves.
Physicists announced the fixing of gravitational waves from another pair of colliding black holes, reported the press service of the Moscow state University.
“December 26, 2015 for the second time scientists have discovered gravitational waves – perturbations of the metric of space-time.
The waves were registered by both detectors of the Laser interferometric gravitational-wave Observatory located in Livingston, Louisiana and Hanford, Washington, USA”, – stated in the message of press-service.
As scholars have noted, the second signal was weaker than the first and resulted from the merger of two black holes with masses between 14 and 8 times the mass of the Sun. The merger formed a more massive black hole with a mass 21 times more solar.
“It is important that the second signal was generated by black holes with relatively small masses, which much better corresponds to the predictions of astrophysicists. Now we can be more confident that the first event was not a rare exception,” – quoted the press service of the Professor of physical faculty of Moscow state University Farid Khalili.
According to Professor of physics Department of Moscow state University Valery Mitrofanov, a second detection of gravitational waves is very important.
“The Foundation for the creation of gravitational wave astronomy becomes stronger and more reliable”, – said the scientist.
Gravitational waves – perturbations of space-time caused by the motion of massive bodies. In the current astrophysics the existence of gravitational waves is one of the most important components of the inflationary model of the universe. According to this model, the universe grew faster than expected in the Standard model.
For the first time the existence of gravitational waves predicted by albert Einstein in 1916, however, due to the relative weakness of the gravitational force for a long time they were not able to fix directly. For the first time this was announced on 11 February 2016. As noted in the scientific press, the opening marks the beginning of a new era in astronomy.
