So, at last they’ve detected them! Einstein was right! Well, eventually…. Interestingly, when old Albert and his colleague Rosen came up with a solution suggesting such waves (1936), they didn’t believe they were real. Einstein needed a little persuading from peer reviewer Howard Robertson that they were in fact real, and only at the last minute amended his scientific paper. Rosen disagreed for years afterwards. In the 1950s other contributors e.g. the brilliant bongo-bashing Nobel Laureate, Richard Feynman, helped cement the belief of their existence with his famous ‘sticky bead’ argument – thankfully, I’ll spare you the details before you develop a headache, need to lie down in a dark place, and wonder if Cornwall might be a good place to catch some big waves!

(info source: John D Barrow’s The Book of Universes)