<p>It's a "ripple" in spacetime. Imagine the traditional picture of planets as marbles sitting on a sheet--heavier bodies push the sheet down farther and deeper. If you place a bowling-ball on one end of the sheet, the entire sheet is affected, but not instantly. It takes an amount of time for the sheet to be moved--this movement can be seen as a wave, with a wavefront, a speed, etc.</p>

<p>In reality, massive gravitational bodies don't magically appear in space, (that we know of... maybe God is planning to drop a giant marble in our Solar System) but gravitational waves are still generated by any change in placement of mass or any acceleration (Einstein's theories that show that gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable). </p>

<p>So you get gravitational waves caused by movements of planets around the sun, etc. That's going to be relatively smooth though, so hard to detect. What we really need is something that creates sharp waves--two giant black holes which are orbiting each other at an incredibly fast RPM is perfect since they're massive and will create a lot of high/low waves as they rotate that we can then detect. </p>

<p>As we improve the detection technology, we may be able to use gravitational waves to detect all sorts of things besides black holes, it just depends on how much we can measure. The nice thing is that you don't need "line of sight" to measure with a gravity wave. So if God drops a giant marble on the other side of the Sun, we could detect it even though we couldn't see it.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-02-29T16:01:30.353Z
2016-02-29T16:01:30.353Z
brentonstrine
<p>We <em>do</em> know what they may be use of. We were able to detect the merger of two black holes, their masses prior to merger, and the mass after merger by observing the gravitational waves produced in the process.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-02-29T10:49:25.187Z
2016-02-29T10:49:25.187Z
Byl Nie
<p>I read about the LIGo experiment recently, but i didn't understand their significance. Although, it's clear to me that the gravitational waves do exist and are caused by large accelerating bodies in space.</p>

<p>but how are they significant to Humans as we do not have any mechanisms for harnessing these waves and Don't know what use they may be of.</p>

<solar-system><gravity><black-hole><gravitational-waves>
What are gravitational waves actually?
Chinmay
# What are gravitational waves actually?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-02-29)

I read about the LIGo experiment recently, but i didn't understand their significance. Although, it's clear to me that the gravitational waves do exist and are caused by large accelerating bodies in space.

but how are they significant to Humans as we do not have any mechanisms for harnessing these waves and Don't know what use they may be of.

**Tags:** solar-system, gravity, black-hole, gravitational-waves


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2016-02-29. Score: 3

It's a "ripple" in spacetime. Imagine the traditional picture of planets as marbles sitting on a sheet--heavier bodies push the sheet down farther and deeper. If you place a bowling-ball on one end of the sheet, the entire sheet is affected, but not instantly. It takes an amount of time for the sheet to be moved--this movement can be seen as a wave, with a wavefront, a speed, etc.

In reality, massive gravitational bodies don't magically appear in space, (that we know of... maybe God is planning to drop a giant marble in our Solar System) but gravitational waves are still generated by any change in placement of mass or any acceleration (Einstein's theories that show that gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable).

So you get gravitational waves caused by movements of planets around the sun, etc. That's going to be relatively smooth though, so hard to detect. What we really need is something that creates sharp waves--two giant black holes which are orbiting each other at an incredibly fast RPM is perfect since they're massive and will create a lot of high/low waves as they rotate that we can then detect.

As we improve the detection technology, we may be able to use gravitational waves to detect all sorts of things besides black holes, it just depends on how much we can measure. The nice thing is that you don't need "line of sight" to measure with a gravity wave. So if God drops a giant marble on the other side of the Sun, we could detect it even though we couldn't see it.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2016-02-29. Score: 1

We *do* know what they may be use of. We were able to detect the merger of two black holes, their masses prior to merger, and the mass after merger by observing the gravitational waves produced in the process.


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