A visual of gravitational waves from two converging black holes is displayed on a monitor behind Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Co-Founder Kip Thorne during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday. Credit: Associated Press

By Patrick Brady, Jolien Creighton, Alan Wiseman And Xavier Siemens

More than 100 years ago, Einstein predicted that gravitational waves should exist. Now, scientists have finally detected them. This is a monumental achievement. It took the sustained effort of multiple generations of scientists to reach this goal. Einstein also thought these waves too small to be measurable. Yet here we are, starting a journey of discovery using gravitational waves to reveal the cosmos as we have not seen it before.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee played a pivotal role in the discovery made by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory — LIGO. We are important partners in this global endeavor.

Our role was made possible by the vision and sustained leadership of Wisconsin elected officials, university administrators and university staff to realize the Wisconsin Idea across many generations. This public commitment enabled us to create the essential tools and an intellectual framework that allowed us to identify the signal — an infinitesimal needle in a vast haystack of data — when the gravitational wave from a pair of black holes that collided more than a billion years ago passed the Earth and shook the LIGO detectors.

This achievement belongs to everybody. Yes, the scientists worked for decades to make this detection. But it also was made possible by our common will to support basic research: our society is curious to know how things work, curious to know why things work the way they do and excited to unveil the mysteries of the universe. As scientists, we are privileged to be a part of this quest and of the detection of gravitational waves.

It's hard to overstate the impact of this recent announcement. Not so long ago, we knew only about the light we see with our eyes. Today, we take radio waves, X-rays and microwaves for granted. We use them to communicate, to look inside the human body and to heat our food — and to see the universe in a new light. Yet, these phenomena are all essentially the same thing — light waves at different wavelengths.

Gravitational waves, however, are ripples in the fabric of the universe itself. They give us a completely new way of seeing the universe that promises to revolutionize our understanding even more profoundly than Galileo's first telescope, which marked the beginning of modern astronomy.

We are heirs to great scientists such as Leonard Parker and John Friedman, who came to Milwaukee to explore the theory conceived by Einstein more than a century ago. We work in an era when science often requires the collaboration of hundreds of people, scores of institutions — and the support of citizens around the world.

We are beneficiaries of Wisconsin's tradition of supporting basic research and intellectual inquiry. This heritage has improved our lives in ways unforeseen at the time, but which we now take for granted — from vitamin D in our children's milk to the creation of cutting-edge drugs.

It's difficult to predict how the discovery announced Thursday may shape our world. It seems safe to say that James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz, 19th century pioneers of electromagnetism, never conceived of radios and televisions — to say nothing of satellite communications and cellphones. Michael Faraday could not have imagined in the 1830s that his experiments with electricity would lead to light bulbs, transistors and laptop computers.

We do our science to satisfy our collective curiosity about the way the universe works. But we're also confident that our work and that of our colleagues will benefit the public — most likely in ways we cannot yet predict. And we fully appreciate that our work could not be done without public research institutions such as UW-Milwaukee.

So, we thank the citizens of Milwaukee and Wisconsin for their support, and hope they take pride in the fact that a vital piece of this revolutionary discovery was "made in Milwaukee."

Patrick Brady and Jolien Creighton are professors of physics, and Alan Wiseman and Xavier Siemens are associate professors of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Physics.