Photo: Belmont’s Andrea Prestwich of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard.

It’s not every day that an astrophysicist walks through the doors of Belmont Town Hall.

So when it happened on Friday, Feb. 12 the Belmontonian took the opportunity to ask one; Andrea Prestwich of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory at Harvard – and a Belmont resident, to boot – to explain the discovery of gravitational waves reported the day before, on Thursday, Feb. 13. 

Called by the BBC’s “The Science Hour” host Claudia Hammond as “one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs in the history of science,” the announcement made Thursday morning at a National Science Foundation meeting in Washington D.C. confirmed a critical component of Albert Einstein’s General Relativity made a century ago. 

Listen to the BBC’s podcast which provides an overview of the achievement. 

Prestwich – who matriculated at Queen Mary College, London, with a degree in physics and completed her Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Imperial College London – expressed the excitement of the announcement and explains what it all means.