From StarTalk.
Einstein’s general relativity recasts gravity as the geometry of spacetime. When massive objects accelerate (e.g., black holes, neutron stars), they send out gravitational waves—ripples that LIGO measures. By reading a wave’s frequency (“wavelength”) and amplitude as it washes over Earth, we can infer the source (e.g., two ~30-solar-mass black holes colliding at ~half the speed of light). The “sound” you hear in videos is sonification—a data mapping, not real sound in space.
From ‘When Black Holes Collide, with Nergis Mavalvala’: https://youtu.be/HiqQF5KRHLs?si=Ugox01A3bQT5AdJp
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