If gravitational waves are distortions in time and space that are caused by the size of physical objects.....Correct me if im wrong. This being the case wouldnt those distortions in time and space effect us if we r drawn into the influence of such objects. It appears we r. because that is how we have found orbotting objects in our small solar --- through the relationships of such objects and their pull on each other.
Yes, that sounds correct to me Steve. Mind you I am fairly ignorant on these topics. I assumed your comment was hinting at astrology. Sorry if that wasn't what you were intending. Either way, it might be interesting and informative to start another thread on astrology (maybe there are some already I haven't looked at).
Back to the gravitational waves. As far as I can tell, Einstein said that every object with mass creates these depressions in space-time - relative to the mass of that object. This is gravity and not the attracting force between objects that Isaac Newton apparently proposed. When two massive objects collide then ripples are sent through the fabric of space-time - that's where these gravitational waves come in. In most cases, these gravitational waves are supposed to be minuscule and perhaps undetectable (?). For example, if we bump into each other there is a gravitational wave but not a big one. But apparently in this case, the objects were so massive (two black holes) that their collision created a strong enough ripple that it could be detected with whatever instrument they had designed to detect this. They said that when the two black holes collided that, for a fraction of a second, there was released more energy than all the stars in the known universe combined. That is mind-boggling in itself. These black holes were also some 5 trillion light years away. Oh, and the collision happened 1.3 billion years ago.
