January 22, 2019
All around us in the universe, black holes are smashing into each other with tremendous force. These events are so powerful that they cause ripples in the fabric of space-time—and these ripples, called gravitational waves, travel hundreds of millions of light-years across the universe. Holz and fellow scientists at LIGO built the most sensitive machine ever constructed, detected the waves and opened up an entirely new window on the universe.