Primordial Gravitation Waves are the talk of the scientific town this week. We have heard of Stephen Hawking’s bets with rivals and Einstein’s missing link but what on earth are they and how do they make a difference to you?

A gravitational wave is an elusive thing that until now we have been trying to measure but have only managed to see the effects of. A bit like a trail of footprints in sand. You can get a pretty good idea of what the feet look like from the shape, size and impact of the print. You can also be fairly confident that real feet made the prints but until you actually see the feet you can’t be absolutely sure what the feet are like.

That was the case with gravitational waves… until now! Einstein first claimed that they were essential to explain his Theory of Relativity and nearly one hundred years on we have finally found them. Though there is still work to be done to be absolutely sure, it is looking very much like scientists, using a massive cutting-edge telescope in a collaborative project called BICEP2, have taken their first glimpse of very old gravitational waves. They spotted the feet!

The gravitational waves they measured are so old they are thought to be primordial gravitational waves, which rippled out across space and time right after the Big Bang. Just like a large stone being dropped into a pond (the Big Bang) that causes ripples to start moving out across the surface of the pond – these are the primordial gravitational waves.

Within the next few months we should have more information to ensure that this finding is correct. If it is, then the brightest minds in physics and cosmology have a whole new library of information to work with about our universe.

It is thought that primordial gravitational waves provide the missing link between Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics – the other main theory explaining how the universe works. Until now, these two theories have been difficult to marry up – causing many fierce rivalries among physicists (and there is nothing more frightening than two physicists at war). Gravitational waves may act like the chilled-out hippy peacemaker that lopes in and makes the two theories hold hands.

Aside from the glory of being part of a race of such clever clogs this Holy Grail of science is unlikely to have an immediate impact on your life (unless of course you are one of the scientists who made the discovery and then you are going to be brushing off your best suit and prepping your Nobel Prize speech) but in terms of the future, finding life out in the universe and understanding where on earth we come from, this is the big cheese.

There is one way this discovery may directly change your life… Einstein reckoned that these little ripples could enable time travel because they cause movement in space and time.

And Einstein seems to have been right about pretty much everything else.