THE SCIENCE

Space is normally thought to be a place of silence and emptiness, but the new technology we now use to look up at the sky is allowing us to see and hear the universe in ways never before possible. There are two sides to the project: Exoplanets and Gravitational Waves. Exoplanets are sometimes Earth-like, potentially life-supporting planets orbiting other suns which we can now see using the Hubble space telescope. We have now identified approaching 4000 of these new worlds. Gravitational Waves are a new way to listen to the universe. Predicted by Einstein in 1916, we are now in a position to listen out for these waves. When super-dense objects like neutron stars smash together, the shock waves are so violent that they make the actual universe ripple outwards. As when a stone is dropped into a pond, the ripples eventually reach us and tell us about the birth of new black holes.