Thirty million years ago, in a distant galaxy, two black holes collided. Each black hole is itself a significant disturbance in the fabric of space and time. When they collide, it creates an even greater ripple that gets sent out at the speed of light. In the world of technology, a person is born named Albert Einstein, who predicts that such ripples in the fabric of space and time exist. Meanwhile, this ripple continues to move. Einstein predicts that we should be able to detect one of these. We don’t have the technology yet. That would take another 80 or 90 years just to create the apparatus capable of detecting it. We build the apparatus. This is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, LIGO. Within days of turning on the switch, that wave washes across the Earth. We detected something that was set into motion before we were even human. Einstein not only predicted the existence of gravitational waves, he came up with the general theory of relativity. He also laid the foundation for the invention of the laser, and it is lasers that were used to detect the gravitational waves.

That’s badass.