Gravitational Waves Poster

Gravitational Waves Discovery Commemorative Poser - 2015

Gravitational Waves were the last of Einstein’s predictions from his General Theory of relativity to come back with favorable evidence. Every theory he had was tested and is accepted.

This poster was designed by Ben Schumitz as a commemoration to the discovery of Gravitational Waves in September 2015.

The copy reads as follows:

“Here’s to Einstein. 100 years after he predicted them, scientists have found evidence of Gravitational Waves on September 14th, 2015. They build the most sensitive machine ever created and beamed light over 2.5 miles. They then measured changes in the light beams smaller than 1/10,000th the size of a proton…that’s stupid small.”

Gravitational Waves are concentric ripples that squeeze and stretch the fabric of spacetime and they are caused by the orbit of large gravitational objects. They can be measured from far, far away at extremely small scales. Their recent discovery is thanks to two black holes (one 29 times the size of the sun, the other is 36 times the size of the sun) orbiting closely together at 1.3 million light years away.

Gravitational Waves travel along the fabric of spacetime at light speed and 1.3 million years ago, these two black holes collapsed into one another after rotating around one another at 250 times a second. Combining in less than a fifth of a second, they formed a final black hole 62 times the size of the sun. The effects of this cataclysmic event could be measured on earth 1.3 million years later.

To measure these waves, which were much more difficult to measure once they finally reached us, scientists had to create the most sensitive machine ever built. Considering the changes in spacetime caused by these waves were subatomic, the scientists that were part of the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) experiments, built two machines in two different locations to measure for them. They beamed light over 2.5 miles in 2 different directions and the thought was that the squeezing and stretching of spacetime should cause the lasers to come back at 2 different times.

The experiment yielded positive results and the scientists measured changes smaller than 1/10,000th the size of a proton.