A bizarre new form of astronomy could unlock these 4 cosmic secrets

LIGO

Ripples in the fabric of space, called gravitational waves, are careening across the universe, right through everything and everyone.

And apparently there are a lot of them.

On Wednesday, scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) experiment announced the second-ever detection of gravitational waves - a feat Einstein thought impossible 100 years ago - emanating from two colliding black holes.

"It confirms - it super-confirms - that these events are not flukes," astrophysicist Vicky Kalogera, who has been working with LIGO to analyze the signals, told Tech Insider. "They're happening in nature and we can detect them every few months." This summer, Kalogera thinks LIGO may find 10 or more new gravitational waves, and possibly up to 100 a year later on.

Tech Insider spoke with Imre Bartos, also a physicist working with LIGO, and other researchers earlier this year about the "revolutionary" new era of astronomy they say has begun.

Here are just a handful of formerly impossible things astronomers could do with gravitational waves.