What is all the fuss about gravitational waves?

Someone asked V about gravitational waves sometime back so today we’re going to dumb it down for you. Why is everyone talking about it? What’s the deal with gravitational waves? And what’s in store for the future?

If you like you can listen to the chirp of the first gravitational waves ever detected. And, as promised on the show, here are some links to interesting papers, articles etc.:

• ‘Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger’, by Abbott et al.
• ‘Merging neutron stars generate gravitational waves and a celestial light show’, from Science
• Interesting interview with Barish and Thorne