Four months after the historic first-ever detection of gravitational waves, scientists said they have directly detected another gravitational wave washing over the Earth.

在引力波历史性的首次检测到四个月之后，科学家们近日表示，他们直接探测到另一个引力波正在席卷全球。

The gravitational waves, ripples¹ in the fabric³ of spacetime, were observed for a second time on Dec. 26, 2015, at 03:38:53 UTC, scientists said at a press conference during the American Astronomical⁴ Society conference in San Diego, California.

科学家在加利福尼亚州圣地亚哥举行的美国天文学会会议的新闻发布会商表示，他们于2015年12月26日再次探测到了“时空结构中的涟漪”--引力波。

Scientists said that the incredibly faint ripple² that eventually reached Earth was the result of the spinning dance of a binary⁵ black hole pair on the brink⁶ of merging⁷, although this duo weighed only 8 and 14 solar masses.

科学家表示，此次最终到达地球的引力波非常微弱，它是由两个二进制黑洞相互绕转边缘并合引起的，尽管这两个黑洞的质量分别仅相当于8个和14个太阳质量。

Their merger⁸ produced a single, more massive spinning black hole that is 21 times the mass of the sun, and transformed an additional sun's worth of mass into gravitational energy, they said.

它们的并合产生了一个总质量为21个太阳质量、更加巨大的旋转黑洞，并将额外的1个太阳质量的能量转化成引力能。

The scientists detected the gravitational waves using the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory⁹ (LIGO) interferometers, located in Livingston, Louisiana, and Hanford, Washington.

科学家通过激光干涉引力波天文台在路易斯安那州和华盛顿州的两个干涉仪探测到了此次的引力波。

In contrast, LIGO's historic first detection on Sept. 14, 2015 resulted from a merger of two black holes 36 and 29 times the mass of the sun.

相比之下，于2015年9月14日首次探测到的引力波，是由两个29倍及36倍太阳质量的黑洞合并形成的。

It confirmed a major prediction of Albert Einstein's 1915 general theory of relativity and marked the beginning of the new field of gravitational wave astronomy.

引力波的发现，证实了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦1915年提出的个广义相对论的重大预测，标志着引力波天文学新领域的开端。