Review
In June 2015, a scientific collaboration of scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory announced that two giant black holes that were 89 million light-years away from Earth were constantly rotating and merging, and the gravitational waves generated during the merger were captured by humans.
Since then, human beings have entered a new era in the pace of exploring the universe, and the existence of gravitational waves has been officially proved to be true, ending the direction of the scientific community for a hundred years.
In fact, as early as 1915, the great physicist Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves and wormholes in his book "The Theory of Relativity", but at that time, due to the limitations of human technology, this concept could not be concretely demonstrated; now human beings have spent a full 100 years, spent billions of dollars, and finally confirmed the physical results of a hundred years ago.
So the question is, is investing in huge gravitational wave exploration worth it for humans?
Einstein proposed gravitational waves
Before we explain why values are not worth it, we should first understand what gravitational waves are. Gravity must be very familiar to everyone, the great physicist Newton was affected by the apple landing and discovered gravity, the reason why humans can walk normally on the earth instead of floating in the air like in space, the fundamental reason is the existence of gravity.
Newton therefore believed that just as the earth can influence human behavior through gravity, the reason why the earth orbits the sun according to the established law is also because of the gravitational force of the sun on the earth.
At that time, this statement was generally recognized by the scientific community, after all, as the ancestor of the physics community, Newton's research on gravity naturally far exceeded that of other scientists.
But there was only one person who did not comment on Newton's claims, and that man was Einstein. In Einstein's view, the accelerated movement of the earth around the sun in the universe is not a gravitational force, but a curvature in space-time.
In Einstein's eyes, space is not as vast as the naked eye sees, it is actually more like a taut rubber film. Because the sun is too massive, when the sun falls on this rubber film, it will bend this film, so space-time will bend.
The earth will move around the sun, the fundamental reason is the serious curvature of space-time around the sun, and the globe will inevitably circle the depression formed by this membrane, which is the truth of the earth's rotation.
The problem, then, is that there are actually more celestial bodies in the universe than sand in the desert, and there are hundreds of millions of celestial bodies in the solar system alone, planets, asteroids, and the Kuiper Belt.
When these celestial bodies are pulled by the mass of the sun into this sunken membrane and move, they will make the whole membrane bump, just like the ripples produced by the balls on the surface of the water when they move, except that in this membrane of the universe, this ripple is called gravitational waves.
But in fact, with the level of technology at that time, it was impossible for the physics community to verify Einstein's conjecture through experimental tools, and as for the universe being a curved space-time composition, this sounded like a fantasy, and there was no scientific basis.
It wasn't until gravitational waves were discovered 100 years later that we had to marvel at Einstein's foresight and the profound concepts he came up with.
The enormous value of gravitational waves
So why are human beings so obsessed with finding gravitational waves, and what effect do gravitational waves have on the future development of mankind?
Let's take the simplest example, a pair of friends chatting in the pool, when the distance between the two sides is less than 1 meter, you can clearly hear what the other party is talking about; when the distance reaches 30 meters, it is very difficult to hear each other speak; the equal distance is pulled to 200 meters, we can't hear each other talking.
If a huge curtain is erected in the middle of the pool at this time, the two friends will lose each other's target in an instant, and they will not even be able to judge whether the other party exists. Because the distance is too far away, plus there is a place of line of sight, we can not receive the other party's information at all.
But because of the presence of the water, we can judge whether a friend has left or gone into the water by the ripples or calmness on the water. As long as the friend's body touches the surface of the water, it will definitely cause ripples; theoretically, this ripple often transmits information farther than the sound, and you can even judge the shape of the ripples how many people on the other side are in the water, how much weight they weigh, and so on, which is the huge role of gravitational waves.
In previous years, human research on the universe could only receive electromagnetic waves and visible light from the distant universe through radio telescopes, and thus outlined a primary picture of the universe. But the problem is that this electromagnetic wave is like the sound we mentioned above, if it is transmitted at close range, it is naturally very clear, but if it is placed at the level of the universe, it is very difficult to receive a distance of one light year or ten light years.
Because electromagnetic waves are very easy to be disturbed by various celestial bodies in the universe, as well as electromagnetic phenomena and magnetic fields in the process of operation, these things are the curtains that block the pool, which not only prevents the transmission of sound, but also covers up the true picture of the universe, making it difficult for human beings to reach.
At this time, everyone will think that if we can observe the opposite situation with the help of ripples like a pool, the ripples can not be affected by the curtain, and the scope of transmission is farther, carrying more information, which is the meaning of gravitational waves being applied by humans.
With the existence of gravitational waves, human beings can finally ignore the obscuration of the curtain, can see distant celestial bodies more acutely and intuitively, and human beings have entered a new era in the process of cosmic exploration.
epilogue
All in all, the existence of gravitational waves can bring huge benefits to human beings, if human beings know how to use gravitational waves, and even in the future can improve communication, even if the two sides outside the ten light years can complete communication in an instant, this is the ability of electromagnetic waves.
We can't simply measure gravitational waves and money, not to mention billions of dollars, or hundreds of billions of dollars, which is also a worthwhile investment for human civilization.