Gravitational Waves Detected!

For the first time ever, gravitational waves have been detected and confirmed. On the surface, this may seem inconsequential. After all, we've known an awful lot about gravity since Einstein's general theory of relativity a century ago. Since that time, amazing theoretical work in physics has been done with different ideas about gravity. So, why is this discovery so important?

Until now, gravity waves, gravitons, and the gravitational quantum field have been largely speculative and theoretical. Gravitons had never been directly observed. The effects of the gravitational field are seen every day, of course (when you drop a ball, it falls), but without actually observing the waves/particles of gravity itself, there is a limit to what can be learned and accomplished. Now that waves of gravity have actually been detected, there's no telling what the ramifications will be.

The detection was achieved by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The actual waves were created by the merging of two black holes; one the mass of 29 suns and the other the mass of 36 suns. Each black hole is estimated as being roughly 30 miles in diameter. From CNN:

More than a billion years ago -- LIGO estimates about 1.3 billion -- the two collided at half the speed of light. Gravitational waves pass through everything, so the result traveled through the universe for that time before reaching Earth.

Gravity waves are so incredibly weak, it takes an extremely sensitive detector like LIGO to be able to detect them. LIGO can measure distortions as small as one-thousandth the size of a proton. The gravity waves LIGO detected lasted only one-fifth of a second. Even more amazing, the detection happened at greater than a five-sigma standard of proof, which is the standard requirement for new discovery announcements in experimental quantum physics.

On one hand, this discovery is incredibly exciting. After all, an aspect of God's creation has been detected. Another piece of His grand design can now be understood a bit better. However, this could turn to be troubling news if/when mankind decides to use this knowledge for dangerous and potentially disastrous goals.

What will this discovery bring? David Reitze, executive director of LIGO, is quoted by CNN as saying "What's really exciting is what comes next, I think we're opening a window on the universe -- a window of gravitational wave astronomy." Kip Thorne, Caltech's Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, emeritus, is also quoted as saying something nearly identical, that this discovery is opening a new window on the universe. Gravitational wave astronomy and new branches of quantum physics are interesting windows, of course, but what of some other windows that might be opened?

In a previous article, I talked about how physicists have been toying with the idea of a gravitational communication system to higher dimensions. There are steps toward that goal that must be taken, of course. First would be the confirmed discovery of gravitational waves and/or gravitons themselves. Next would be learning to repeat the detection in a lab by creating gravitons or gravity waves. They would do this by putting Einstein's general theory to the test directly and experimentally. Once that is accomplished, there will be enough information to go on to learn how to manipulate the gravitons themselves.

The strange thing about gravitons is they have the natural ability to traverse spatial dimensions, meaning gravity can quite literally leak into higher dimensions. This is the leading theory as to why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces. An idea has been put forth by physicists a number of years ago saying, once gravitons are discovered, it would be possible to string gravitons in a particular order to communicate a type of binary message, send the message into a higher dimension, then have a detector set up to wait for a reply. Science is now one step closer to this highly strange goal.

Interestingly enough, this detection of gravitational waves actually occurred back in September of 2015. It wasn't officially announced until today (February 11th 2016), six months later. This leads us to wonder, what else has been accomplished and not yet announced? Could these discoveries be what spurs on the opening of the abyss in Revelation chapter nine? Only time will tell, but by the looks of it, we are not too far off from knowing for sure.