NEW WINDOW ON THE
COSMOS Titans Make Gravitational-Wave History By Debra Cano Ramos / Images by Matt Gush
he time to pop the champagne had finally arrived. Applause, whoops and a serenade of “chirps” erupted inside Cal State Fullerton’s Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy Center on this early February morning. The first direct detection of gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of space-time — had just been announced to the world, opening a new window onto the cosmos. An international collaboration of scientists, including researchers from Cal State Fullerton, heard the distinctive “chirp” — a pair of black holes colliding over 1 billion years ago in the distant universe that produced the gravitational waves. The observation of the black-hole merger also confirmed a major prediction Albert Einstein made 100 years ago in his general theory of relativity: gravitational waves exist. ►
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CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, FULLERTON I 15