Question: What are gravitational waves and what do they tell us about the Big Bang?

Lynne Thomas answered on 23 Jun 2014:

When the big bang happened, the universe expanded very quickly and as a consequence, scientists believe that ripples in space-time and these are called gravitational waves. So if you were to experience it, you would notice your height getting bigger and smaller and the time on your watch speeding up and slowing down again. Thankfully in our part of the universe, there are no big gravitational waves so any affects on use would be miniscule. We can’t see gravity with telescopes but we can see the effect that it causes on the light in the Universe so we would have to indirectly observe gravitational waves rather than directly see them, at least with our current technology. Gravitational waves are a part of our current theory on the origins of the Universe so if we can observe them in some way, that would lend some evidence to the idea that the Universe is constantly expanding.