周四一国际研究团队宣布他们于去年九月首次直接探测到了引力波，请看来自网络的报道：

    Sept. 14, 2015 could go down in history as the day the cosmos chirped. Astronomy will never be the same.

    An international team of researchers announced Thursday that on that date, they became the first group to detect a cosmic phenomenon that Albert Einstein first predicted 100 years ago: gravitational waves.

    These waves radiate from their sources at the speed of light, stretching and squeezing the very fabric of space-time with predictable cadences.

    报道中的gravitational waves就是引力波，也称重力波。100年前，爱因斯坦首次在广义相对论（General Theory of Relativity）提到了这个词。石头被投进水中会有波纹产生，而黑洞等质量巨大的天体在剧烈运动时产生的“时空涟漪”（ripples in the space-time），称为引力波，这种波会以引力辐射的形式传递能量。引力波的发现将为大爆炸理论

    （the big bang theory）和宇宙膨胀理论（the Inflation Theory）等各种预见性理论找到证据。