I've been doing a bit of research in the last few minutes about gravitational waves. Now, I understand what gravity is - the curvature of space-time. What I'd like to know is how this causes waves.
My understanding is that such waves are caused by orbits. What the LIGO guys saw was a byproduct of two black holes orbiting each other. As the New Yorker explained, it was like children bouncing around each other on a trampoline.
To use a Newtonian example, I might think about ocean waves. The variations in the wave heights are caused by the pull of the moon and of the sun. Quite literally, such variations are the byproducts of gravitational waves!
