2016

BREAKTHROUGH
of theYEAR

The cosmos aquiver

he discovery of ripples in spacetimegravitational wavesshook

the scientific world this year. It fulfilled a prediction made 100 years
ago by Albert Einstein and
capped a 40-year quest to spot
the infinitesimal ripples. But instead of the end of the story, scientists see the discovery as the birth
of a new field: gravitational wave astronomy.
In 1915, Einstein explained that grav1516

ity arises because massive bodies warp

space and time, or spacetime, causing freefalling objects to follow curved paths such
as the arc of a thrown ball or the elliptical orbit of a planet around its sun.
Einstein then calculated that a barbellshaped distribution of mass whirling endto-end like a baton should radiate ripples
in spacetime that zip along at light speed
gravitational waves. On 11 February, physicists working with the Laser Interferometer

Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)

twin instruments in Hanford, Washington,
and Livingston, Louisianaannounced that
they had seen just what Einstein predicted:
a burst of waves created as two black holes
spiraled into each other 1.3 billion lightyears away.
The triumph was hard earned. Einstein
himself vacillated for decades over whether
gravitational waves should exist. Even if they
did, the only source Einstein could imagine,
sciencemag.org SCIENCE

23 DECEMBER 2016 VOL 354 ISSUE 6319

Published by AAAS

PHOTO: RICH FRISHMAN

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Detections of gravitational waves foreshadow a new way to eavesdrop

on the most violent events in the universe By Adrian Cho

SCIENCE sciencemag.org

Peoples choice
Our readers weigh in, and surprise
us with their top pick.
Visitors to Sciences website were
offered the chance to vote on a list of
candidates for Breakthrough of the
Year while Science editors and writers
were finalizing their choices. A first
round of voting narrowed the top
candidates to five, and a second round,
in which some 225,000 votes were
cast, determined the final peoples
choice. In the end, a breakthrough
in culture techniques that enabled
researchers to keep human embryos
developing in the lab for almost
2 weeks edged out Sciences top
choice, the detection of gravitational
waves. We made human embryo
culture an area to watch because we
expect it will result in new findings
about early human development and
also spark debate on whether time
limits on culturing human embryos
now 14 days in many regulations and
guidelinesshould be extended.
Gravitational waves and human
embryo culturing accounted for 75%
of the final votes. The full results:
1

Human embryo culture 43%

Gravitational waves 32%

Portable DNA sequencers 13%

Artificial intelligence beats

Go champ 7%

Worn-out cells and aging 5%

straints. Now, NASA wants back in. ESA officials hope to launch the roughly $1.5 billion
mission in 2034about the time physicists
plan to build the next generation of groundbased detectors.
Mapping the sky with microwave telescopes, scientists might even spot, indirectly,
traces of the longest and oldest gravitational
waves, which rippled through the infant
universe and now span the cosmos. Those
primordial gravitational waves may have left
an imprint on the afterglow of the big bang,
the cosmic microwave background. Spotting
them would help confirm that the newborn
universe underwent an exponential growth
spurt called inflation.
The discovery of gravitational waves has
changed the scientific landscape. A new science beckons. j
23 DECEMBER 2016 VOL 354 ISSUE 6319

Published by AAAS

1517

Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on January 1, 2017

theorists predict. Others speculate that a

spinning black hole could generate a cloud
of hypothetical particles called axions, which
two orbiting stars, would produce waves too
could generate gravitational waves by annifeeble to detect. By the late 1960s, however,
hilating one another en masse.
astrophysicists knew of much denser concenMeanwhile, some astronomers are trying
trations of mass. They had spotted neutron
to detect gravitational waves in a different
stars and dreamed up black holes, the ultraway. Within the hearts of large galaxies lurk
intense gravitational fields left behind when
supermassive black holes weighing hunmassive stars collapse to nothing. Spiraldreds of millions or billions of solar masses.
ing together, such things could, in theory,
When two such monsters merge, they radiproduce observable waves. In 1972, Rainer
ate hugely powerful waves with wavelengths
Weiss, a physicist at the Massachusetts Inlight-years longthousands of times longer
stitute of Technology in Cambridge, set out
than instruments like LIGO can detect. To
a scheme to detect them with L-shaped
spot those waves, astronomers are turning to
optical instruments called interferometers,
stellar timepieces called millisecond pulsars.
sowing the seed for LIGO.
Pulsarsspinning neutron starsemit
Each LIGO interferometer has two
incredibly regular pulses of radio waves.
4-kilometer-long arms with mirrors at either
As long-wavelength gravitational waves
end, housed in a giant vacuum chamber. By
buffet Earth, they should push the planet
bouncing laser light between the mirrors,
toward some pulsars and away from othphysicists can compare the arms lengths
ers. That motion would, in turn, shorten
to within 1/10,000 the width of a proton. A
or stretch the time between pulses from
passing gravitational wave would generally
pulsars in different directions, in an effect
stretch the arms by different amounts, and
akin to the Doppler shift. The resulting
thats what the LIGO team spotted. The tight
variations and correlations among pulfit between that first signal and computer
sars timing should reveal the cacophony
modeling validated Einsteins
of long-wavelength gravitational
theory of gravity, known as genwaves, and the spectrum of lonON OUR WEBSITE
eral relativity, as never before.
ger and shorter waves would
For more on the
Now, physicists are eagerly
help physicists trace the rate
Breakthrough of
anticipating what may come
at which galaxies formed and
the Year, including
a video and a
next, because gravitational waves
merged throughout cosmic hispodcast, go to:
promise an entirely new way to
tory. Teams in the United States,
http://scim.ag/
peer into the cosmos. First, physiEurope, and Australia hope to
2016breakthru.
cists hope to spot many more
see a signal within 2 or 3 years
events. LIGO already has detected a second
although the U.S. effort is threatened by
black hole merger and a third, weaker sigplans at the National Science Foundation
nal. The interferometers resumed taking
to defund the two radio telescopes it uses.
data last month, and, if they can reach their
Later, physicists hope to launch the Laser
design sensitivity, they may eventually see a
Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Three
black hole merger on average once a day.
LISA spacecraft, cartwheeling in concert
Other instruments will soon join the
around the sun, would form a triangular
hunt. The upgraded VIRGO detector in Italy
interferometer with arms millions of kiloshould turn on early next year. Physicists
meters long, enabling LISA to sense gravitain Japan are building a detector called the
tional waves with wavelengths from millions
Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector, and
to billions of kilometersbetween LIGOs
LIGO physicists plan to add a detector in
range of thousands of kilometers and the
India in the early 2020s. Three or more delight-years of pulsar timing.
tectors together should be able to pinpoint
From those waves, LISA could track the
a source in the sky by triangulation. That
mergers of smaller supermassive black holes
could help telescopes home in on the same
with much greater precision than pulsar timevent, and perhaps detect other signals from
ing. It should be able to spot the long, slow
it. For example, if gravitational wave detecwindup of two black holes spiraling together
tors sense the merger of two neutron stars
before ground-based instruments like LIGO
and telescopes pick up light or x-rays from it,
see the crashing finale. LISA could also dethe signals together might offer clues about
tect stellar mass black holes falling into the
the exotic matter in neutron stars.
supermassive black hole in the center of our
The detectors might even test wilder ideas
Milky Way galaxy, enabling physicists to
about black holes. Quantum theory suggests
study that behemoth in great detail.
a black hole might contain a hidden fireLISA was originally proposed decades ago
wall that would obliterate anything that
as a joint mission between NASA and the Eurofalls in. If so, merging black holes should
pean Space Agency (ESA), but the United
produce gravitational wave echoes, some
States pulled out in 2011, citing budget conThe carbon-copy signals seen by the LIGO detector
in Washington state (shown) and its Louisiana twin.

The cosmos aquiver

Adrian Cho (December 22, 2016)
Science 354 (6319), 1516-1517. [doi:
10.1126/science.354.6319.1516]

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