# What the discovery of gravitational waves means

- Institution: TED
- Department: TED2016
- Speaker: Allan Adams
- Year: 2016
- Level: For everyone
- Language: English
- Subjects: Physics, Astronomy and space
- Source: [TED](https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_adams_what_the_discovery_of_gravitational_waves_means)
- Licence: [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) (Non-commercial use only, and no changed versions.)
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (sources give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the source's own words)

More than a billion years ago, two black holes in a distant galaxy locked into a spiral, falling inexorably toward each other, and collided. "All that energy was pumped into the fabric of time and space itself," says theoretical physicist Allan Adams, "making the universe explode in roiling waves of gravity." About 25 years ago, a group of scientists built a giant laser detector called LIGO to search for these kinds of waves, which had been predicted but never observed. In this mind-bending talk, Adams breaks down what happened when, in September 2015, LIGO detected an unthinkably small anomaly, leading to one of the most exciting discoveries in the history of physics.

## Lectures

1. [What the discovery of gravitational waves means](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/learn/ted/allan_adams_what_the_discovery_of_gravitational_waves_means/0b63b56f1849), 11 min (TED's player)