A hundred years ago Albert Einstein predicted that in an extremely violent event caused by massive objects, it would actually send a ripple in time and space itself. In Einstein's Theory of Relativity he states that space and time are two sides of the same coin, and that space-time is dynamic able to stretch and jiggle similar to a piece of cloth and therefore can be affected by massive objects in space, such as black holes and supernovas.

On February 10th, 2016, it was announced that scientist had detected a ripple in space-time, and recorded it. In this case the distortion of space-time was caused by two black holes circling each other, getting closer and closer, until they finally collided in an extremely violent event that warped space-time.

While this all sounds like stuff straight from Star Wars and Star Trek, this discovery confirms Einstein's predictions made in General Relativity, almost a hundred years ago.

The team of scientist that discovered the waves ran the Large Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO), a massive instrument specifically made to detect gravitational waves. LIGO is a pair of L-Shaped antennas in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana. It works by firing a laser and splitting in two directions, the lasers then reflect back into a Photodetector that can measure if the photons in the laser have been distorted. On September 14, 2015 LIGO detected a distortion indicating that a gravitational wave, a ripple in space-time, had passed through earth and recorded the sound that it made.

This gravitational wave was caused by two black holes colliding more than a billion years ago, but had just passed by earth on that date. But don't worry, like all waves, it decays over time and the gravitational wave was faint that by the time it passed by earth that it only altered distorted the laser by the size of a few photons.

Professor Stephen Hawking, an expert on black holes said "Gravitational waves provide a completely new way at looking at the universe. The ability to detect them has the potential to revolutionize astronomy. This discovery is the first detection of a black hole binary system and the first observation of black holes merging." Prof Hawking added "we may even see relics of the very early Universe during the Big Bang." The entire scientific community is ecstatic on what this means for the future of astronomy and physics.

There is already talk of Nobel Prizes for the research team running the two LICO facilities, and more excitement for what we will discover in the future. Science is forever changing, and we learn new things about our amazingly complex Universe everyday. I find it amazing that on September 15, 2015 a ripple in time and space passed through Earth and all of us on it. Scientist like Stephen Hawking hope that we can someday detect the original gravitational waves caused by The Big Bang to give us a better understanding of the birth our Universe.