A little less than five years ago, on February 11, 2016, scientists were able to announce the first-ever detection of gravitational waves being emitted during the merger of distant black holes. Gravitational waves are literal waves in space-time that stretch and contract the fabric of our universe as they sweep across space. We actually detect them through these stretches as they distort our world and massive laser systems at the LIGO and Virgo facilities in the US and EU.

That first detection has been followed by many more, with the total published hitting fifty in October 2020. From merging neutron stars that produce gold to merging massive black holes that hint at the origins of supermassive black holes, the diversity of these systems has been impressive, but hard to capture in any one picture, graph, or paper. To try to express the breadth of what they’ve seen, the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations partnered with data visualizer Nadieh Bremer to create an interactive infographic that puts all these events into context: showing when they occurred in time and the diversity of their sizes. Not only can you look at the information, but you can also listen — key mergers have been translated into sound files so that you can hear the gravitational waves.

We’re linking to this infographic on our website DailySpace.org, and we encourage all of you to check it out.

Most striking to me was how this infographic reminds us of the sheer size of our universe and the time it takes even light to travel. The nearest source of gravitational waves so far detected was a neutron star collision that occurred more than 100 million years ago and generated waves that passed over Earth in 2017. The biggest merger observed came from two black holes that merged before our Sun had even formed.

Space is vast, and yet gravitational waves sweeping through this vastness can literally — for the smallest moments — reshape us in ways that we may not notice, but our scientific detectors can see.

More Information

Science News article