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RE: General relativity 101 - Gravitational waves in a nutshell
I think I have a question? How do these measurements and findings affect the way we perceive the universe from a physical-scientific perspective? What do know that we did not know before we could measure these, aside from their existence?
So you think you have a question but you are not sure... hmmm...
Gravitational waves were a predictions of general relativity, but they were never observed so far. This someone was the missing observation to validate this theory. Moreover, we today now that gravity propagates at the speed of light. Again, this matches the predictions, but we needed the confirmation. Finally, this is also the first direct observations of black holes. However, we are still trying to confirm that general relativity the correct theory of gravity?
We have also technically managed to observe something as tiny as 0.000000000000000001 meter. This is a great accomplishment as such.
Now the next steps consist in using more data to get a better knowledge on the first moment of the universe (things we cannot do with light, for instance). This could be (or could not be) connected with dark matter, and so on. For instance, dark matter could be made of primordial black holes. There are still plenty of things we don't know and we need more information about.