If you wanted to measure gravitational waves, waving your arms around would be a really bad source.

One plus one does not equal two. These ripples in space and time are so small.

Hello and welcome to the supermassive podcast from the Royal Astronomical Society with me, science journalist,

Izzy Clark and astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smithurst. Yeah, grab your space surfboards

because this month it's all about gravitational waves. We're going to find out what they are

and ask how the heck do you detect something so small?

And shout out to listener Michael Cleary,

because he sent a question about gravitational waves a fair few months ago,

and we decided that the topic needed a little bit more time than just one answer.

So we'll get to it.

I would have been there forever otherwise.

You'd have been like, shut up. I'm just like, you're going to just get the shepherd's crook comes out like, shut out.

And obviously, Dr. Robert Massey, the deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society is here.

So how excited are you about gravitational waves?

You know, one of the great things about being in astronomy for a few decades

is you get to see things that you thought might be impossible become reality.

And gravitational waves, the first detection of those in 2015 was one of those.

I remember going to scientific meetings in 2000,

where people were talking about

building detectors that they knew probably wouldn't detect gravitational waves and then to do all the

engineering, work through it all. And then finally, finally, finally, 2015, you see it happen. And when

you think about it, this tiny shift in space time, I mean, they're huge disturbances in space

...