I recently posted a track on SoundCloud that included the sonification of LIGO’s gravitational wave data. A student asked me what that meant. Since today is Albert Einstein’s birthday, what better time to try to formulate an answer? https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/ligo-chirp First, some context: 1.3 billion years ago, two black holes collided. Each was about thirty times as …
Tag Archives: relativity
How is Earth’s gravity generated?
Gravity is the warping of spacetime by mass or energy. A mass like the Earth warps spacetime so that the shortest path, the “path of least resistance,” for inertial movement is towards the Earth’s center. Using instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope, it’s possible to literally see the warping of spacetime by very massive objects …