But a gravitational wave? That’s a distortion of space-time itself — a stretching and squeezing of the fabric of reality, a wave of deformation tearing through the cosmos, warping everything in its path. The monstrous denizens of the intergalactic deep reveal themselves not through the light they emit but by how they stir the space-time we share. When a gravitational wave moves through you, you are, for a moment, a different shape.
It’s a great discovery. I like the poetic spirit of the author, but at the same time I think it can be quite misleading in the present misinformation age. “You are a different shape” also as the Moon rotates around the Earth, for example – it’s tidal forces in both cases. Actually the “distortion of you” might be stronger owing to the Moon than to gravitational waves – have to compare their order of magnitude.
Or sound waves, literally pressure waves. We can hear or feel them because they deform our body.