The first step to understanding this model, is to remember one of the basic ideas behind relativity.
Space-time is almost like a blanket or rubber sheet, stretched across... um, we'll leave that analogy there. But imagine it as a stretched sheet. Put some massive objects on it, and it will distort the sheet, giving some nice gentle valleys and pits. Gravity is merely the acceleration experienced by an object as it falls into one of these pits.
This was Einstein's idea, and spawned a vast array of new and wonderful ideas and hypotheses, one of which was gravitational waves.
Put simply, the sheet can have waves moving across it, just like waves on the surface of the ocean. These fluctuations in space time are gravitational waves.
These ripples can be generated by two massive objects orbiting each other, as shown by this picture here of two neutron stars orbiting each other.
Space-time is almost like a blanket or rubber sheet, stretched across... um, we'll leave that analogy there. But imagine it as a stretched sheet. Put some massive objects on it, and it will distort the sheet, giving some nice gentle valleys and pits. Gravity is merely the acceleration experienced by an object as it falls into one of these pits.
This was Einstein's idea, and spawned a vast array of new and wonderful ideas and hypotheses, one of which was gravitational waves.
Put simply, the sheet can have waves moving across it, just like waves on the surface of the ocean. These fluctuations in space time are gravitational waves.
These ripples can be generated by two massive objects orbiting each other, as shown by this picture here of two neutron stars orbiting each other.
See how the distortion in space time propagates away from the stars?
These are phenomenally hard to detect, and there is a search right now to find them. The evidence we have for it now really just involves seeing a slow down in orbital speeds of two known neuron stars orbiting each. This lost energy must go somewhere, and it is believed it's carried off by this gravitational waves.
The reason they are so hard to detect is because gravity is actually a fairly weak force. It takes an awful lot of matter to make an appreciable gravitational field (which you know, since it's taking the whole mass of the Earth to keep you from flying into space...). The gravitational wave is obscured by all the other forces around us. Even my above example is in dispute.
However, in New Eden we already have fairly hard evidence for things which should only be hypothetical. Black Holes are merely mundane window dressing to wormhole corps shenanigans, and wormholes themselves are prolific to the point of common feature. What I am suggesting, and will be building from, is the idea that gravitational waves are not only present in New Eden, but actually strongly affecting the cluster.
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