The LISA Pathfinder (centre) with its rocket casings
The LISA Pathfinder mission successfully launched today, on its way to demonstrate technology for observing gravitational waves from space. Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, predicted a century ago by Einstein in his theory of general relativity. Einstein's theory predicts that these fluctuations are generated by massive objects that can create large distortions in spacetime, such as supernova explosions. Gravitational waves should pervade the universe, but they have not yet been directly detected because they are so small. For example, the ripples emitted by a pair of orbiting black holes would stretch a million-kilometre-long ruler by less than the diameter of an atom. It's an extremely challenging experiment that requires very high precision technology. The whole LISA team has created something exquisite, and it will be incredible to see it working.
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