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Thirty million years ago, in a distant galaxy, two black holes collided. Each black hole is itself a significant disturbance in the fabric of space and time. When they collide, it creates an even greater ripple that gets sent out at the speed of light.

In the world of technology, a person is born called Albert Einstein, who predicts the fact that such a thing as ripples through the fabric of space and time exist. Meanwhile, this ripple continues to move. Einstein predicts we should be able to detect one of these, but we just don’t have the technology yet. That would take another 80 or 90 years just to create the apparatus that could detect it.

We build the apparatus. This is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO. Within days of turning on the switch, that wave washes across the Earth. We detected something that was cast into motion before we were human.

Einstein not only predicted the existence of gravitational waves, he came up with the general theory of relativity. He also laid the foundation for the invention of the laser, and it is lasers that were used to detect the gravitational waves.

That’s badass.