WATCH: Professor Stephen Hawking’s thoughts on LIGO and the discovery of gravitational waves

Following the unprecedented discovery of gravitational waves by an international team of scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), professor Stephen Hawking hailed this event as “groundbreaking”.

In a recorded statement, he stated, “I would like to congratulate the LIGO team on their groundbreaking discovery. These results confirm several very important predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It confirms the existence of gravitational waves directly.”

He went on to say, “Until now, our observations of the universe have exploited light, radio waves and electromagnetic radiation. Gravitational waves provide a completely new way of looking at the universe. The ability to detect them has the potential  to revolutionize astronomy.”

This discovery marks the first ever observation of two black holes merging--an event that occurred about 1.3 billion years ago. Professor Hawking goes on to say that this discovery also presents a few challenges, one being the fact that the mass of these two combined black holes is actually larger than anticipated, despite the fact that gravitational collapse happens during such a merger.

On the implications of this discovery for the future of astronomy, he stated, “Apart from testing general relativity, we could hope to see black holes throughout the history of the universe.”