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When two black holes collide, space stretches and squeezes, and instruments have felt it pass.

Physics Facts, sourced to LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

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Einstein predicted these ripples in 1916 and doubted anyone could ever measure one. The stretch reaching Earth from a collision a billion light years away changes a four kilometer measuring arm by a fraction of the width of a proton. Detecting that took decades of engineering, a pair of instruments far apart so that local shaking could be ruled out, and the first confirmed signal arrived in 2015, a century after the paper.

The claim comes from LIGO Scientific Collaboration.

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