As with so much in physics, it has to do with Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Two neutron stars collide; the resulting gravitational wave spread at the speed of light. The dead cores of two stars collided 130 million years ago in a galaxy somewhat far away.
The event prompted worldwide headlines as the dawn of “multimessenger astronomy.” Astronomers had waited a generation for this moment. But it was also the first-ever direct confirmation that gravity travels at the speed of light.We all know light obeys a speed limit — roughly 186,000 miles per second. Nothing travels faster. But why should gravity travel at the same speed?
Einstein overthrew Isaac Newton’s idea of “absolute time.” Newton thought time marched onward everywhere at an identical pace — regardless of how we mortals perceived it. It was unflinching. By that line of thinking, one second on Earth is one second near a black hole .But then Einstein showed that time is relative. It changes with speed and in the presence of gravity. One of the ramifications of that is that you can’t have simultaneous.
Creighton explains that in electromagnetism, when you shake an electron, it creates a change in the electric field that spreads out at the speed of light. Gravity works the same way. Shake a mass and the change in the gravitational field — the gravitational wave — propagates at that same speed.
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