Physicist working in the astronomy field are constantly making new and exciting discoveries to do with the universe. Discoveries in fields such as quantum physics, particle theory, cosmology, quantum mechanics and general relativity allow us to better our knowledge about the phenomena which has been observed for centuries and has pondered the minds of physicists such as Einstein, Feynman and Higgs.
These physicists, and many since have been asking questions such as:
• How did the universe come to be?
• How will the universe change in the future?
• What causes the observed phenomena to occur?
Humans have looked up at the night …show more content…
(Astronomy, 2012)
Mankind has long gazed toward the heavens, searching to put meaning and order to the universe around him. Although the movement of constellations — patterns imprinted on the night sky — were the easiest to track, other celestial events such as eclipses and the motion of planets were also charted and predicted. Definition of astronomy: Astronomy is the study of the sun, moon, stars, planets, comets, gas, galaxies, gas, dust and other non-Earthly bodies and phenomena - See more at: …show more content…
According to general relativity, this was exactly the type of system that should produce, or radiate gravitational waves. Realising that the discovery of such a thing could be used to test Einstein's bold prediction, astronomers started to measure how the period of the stars' orbits changed over time. Over the next eight years, it was determined that the stars were indeed getting closer to one another at exactly the rate predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This has now been observed for more than 40 years and the changes observed in the orbit agree with the general relativity theory so well that there is no doubt that it is radiating gravitational waves. ("What are Gravitational Waves?",