A Brief Introduction to Gravitational Waves
The first question you're probably asking is, what is a gravitational wave? And why do I care? Well, I can answer that very easily! Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of reality.
No, seriously. Gravitational waves are waves in the fabric of space-time, caused by a catastrophic event such as two black holes colliding. Einstein predicted them in his 1916 theory of General Relativity, but we didn't have any proof that they actually existed until 2016 when they were detected by LIGO. Since then, they've been a growing area of study, and one that I find particularly cool (see, this entire website). I feel that this gif is a pretty good illustration of the concept (also, if you get more interested in gravitational waves, you will see this gif everywhere.
What is space-time?
(Feel free to skip this one if you already know what space-time is.)
I often find that space-time is one of those things that everyone seems to have difficulty explaining and understanding. I think it's actually pretty easy to explain as long as you don't over-complicate it, which everyone seems to want to do. Also, everyone always seems to use the rubber sheet analogy, which (in my opinion) does not help.
Let's start at the beginning. When Newton first came up with gravity, he pictured it as a force that attracted everything towards the Earth, and came up with the famous equation
