Communicating with Gravitational Waves

This illustration shows the merger of two black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. Could black holes like these (which represent those detected by LIGO on Dec. 26, 2015) collide in the dusty disk around a quasar's supermassive black hole explain gravitational waves, too? Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle
This illustration shows the merger of two supermassive black holes and the gravitational waves that ripple outward as the black holes spiral toward each other. Image Credit: LIGO/T. Pyle

When astronomers detected the first long-predicted gravitational waves in 2015, it opened a whole new window into the Universe. Before that, astronomy depended on observations of light in all its wavelengths.

We also use light to communicate, mostly radio waves. Could we use gravitational waves to communicate?

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