The Morning Ticker has the story What the heck are gravitational waves? Here’s the beautiful explanation [VIDEO].

The discovery of gravitational waves has been perhaps the biggest moment in science since the discovery of the Higgs boson — but what exactly are they and what makes them so important? A physicist was on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert to break it down for everyone in America.

Here is the featured video Gravitational Waves Hit The Late Show.

I always love the analogy of the bowling ball on the trampoline and the representation of gravity bending space in the three dimensional plot superimposed on images of planets. It is such a simple concept to grasp, and the plots and explanations make you think you have learned something. Then I say to myself, a three dimensional plot has three axes. In the ones being shown, the horizontal axes represent two of the three space dimensions, and the third axis is what?

When we are talking space/time, it has four dimensions of its own. If you could conceive of a five dimensional plot, what is the 5th dimension? I did look this up on Google once and came up with some understanding of these questions, but now I have forgotten what I learned.

If you would prefer, just walk away thinking those plots have taught you something about general relativity, and be satisfied. You can nod your head knowingly whenever you see such a presentation in the future.