Ed Markey: “more than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. He predicted that violent events in the…”

“more than 100 years ago, Albert Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. He predicted that violent events in the early universe shocked the cosmos, sending gravity waves rippling through the fabric of space time. By the time these waves reached Earth, they would be ``vanishingly small,'' and, with the technology available in Einstein's day, impossible to detect. But after 100 more years of science and innovation, scientists announced yesterday that, with their new cosmic hearing aid, they have heard the first ripples from space. I congratulate the men and women of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, an international project of over 900 scientists led by MIT and Caltech, for their hard work and dedication. Using cutting-edge facilities in Louisiana and Washington State, scientists detected a vibration in the space-time continuum, opening our ears, not just our eyes, to space. A billion years ago in a distant galaxy, two black holes spiraled inward on each other. Their eventual collapse released the energy of a billion trillion suns in a fraction of a second and sent gravity waves rippling through space and time. Gravity waves compress space in one direction and stretch it in the other. Since this push and pull weakens with distance, scientists have long thought gravity waves would be too faint to measure on Earth. But yesterday scientists proved such skepticism wrong.…”