Ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself, traveling at the speed of light and caused by accelerating massive objects, particularly merging black holes or neutron stars. These waves stretch and compress space as they pass through, and were first directly detected in 2015.
The concept was predicted by Albert Einstein in 1916 as part of his general theory of relativity, combining 'gravitational' from Latin 'gravitas' (weight) and 'waves' describing the ripple-like propagation. Einstein himself doubted they could ever be detected due to their incredibly small effects.
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