'A new way to study our universe': what gravitational waves mean for future science

The 2017 physics Nobel prize was awarded for the detection of gravitational waves. But what else could be revealed now that this discovery has been made?

You wait 100 years for a gravitational wave and then four come along at once. Or so it must seem to those who spent decades designing and building the exquisite instruments needed to sense the minuscule ripples in spacetime that Albert Einstein foresaw in his 1905 theory of general relativity.

The first gravitational wave bagged by physicists reached Earth on 14 September 2015 and sent a quiver through the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo). The second hit three months later, on Boxing Day, followed by a third in January this year. When the fourth wave arrived in August, both Ligo and a second observatory in Italy, named Virgo, recorded the moment.