Merger of two black holes and the resulting emission of gravitational radiation (colored fields, which represent a component of the curvature of space-time). The yellow areas near the black holes do not correspond to physical structures but generally indicate where the strong non-linear gravitational-field interactions are in play. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity a century ago, and scientists have been attempting to detect them for 50 years. Einstein pictured these waves as ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by massive, accelerating bodies, such as black holes orbiting each other. Scientists are interested in observing and characterizing these waves to learn more about the sources producing them and about gravity itself. On February 11, 2016, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and Virgo Collaboration teams announced that they had directly detected gravitational waves from a pair of black holes merging using the Advanced LIGO detectors. Release date September 27, 2012.