LIGO and the Detection of Gravitational Waves

The idea of gravitational waves was already implicit in the 1905 special theory of relativity, with its finite limiting speed for information transfer. The explicit formulation for gravitational waves in general relativity was put forward by Einstein in 1916 and 1918. He showed that the acceleration of masses generates time-dependent gravitational fields that propagate away from their sources at the speed of light as warpages of spacetime. Such a propagating warpage is called a gravitational wave.