Ripple effect

摘要

Forget multimillion-dollar spacecraft and elaborate underground labs. The simplest way to detect gravity waves directly could be to listen to flutters in the regular bursts of radio waves from distant pulsars. Any accelerating mass is believed to create ripples in space-time called gravity waves. They were predicted by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity, and people have been trying to pick up these weak and elusive undulations ever since. If we could detect them, they should reveal valuable information about the structure of the Universe, and we'd even be able to "see" mysterious dark matter that is only detectable gravitationally.