An international team led by U.S. scientists has confirmed the existence of gravitational waves for the first time. The ripples that travel in the fabric of space and time had been proposed by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity about 100 years ago.
Scientists from the LIGO Scientific Collaboration made the announcement on Thursday in Washington. The research group says it observed gravitational waves in September last year, using twin laser detectors about 3,000 kilometers apart. The team says the waves were produced during the final fraction of a second when two black holes merged.
Takaaki Kajita has been playing a central role in a Japanese project to observe gravitational waves and was a co-winner of last year's Nobel Prize in Physics. He says the observation is a historic achievement and his group hopes to contribute to the new field of gravitational-wave astronomy.
◆ripple （広がっていく）さざ波、波紋
◆theory of relativity 相対性理論
◆detector 検出器
◆fraction わずかな一部
