Researchers have tracked the collision of two neutron stars based on their gravitational waves.

Gravitational waves - tiny ripples in space-time – have only been detected five times in history.

The 1,500-strong Advanced LIGO and Virgo teams in the US and Italy have reported on the most recent peek through this new window on the universe - detecting gravitational waves from the explosive merger of two neutron stars 130 million light years from Earth.

The detection and pinpointing of these mind-bending galactic events is only possible through a network of space and land-based telescopes all over the world, including Australia.

“This discovery realises a long-standing goal many of us have had — that is, to simultaneously observe rare cosmic events using both traditional as well as gravitational-wave observatories,” said France Cordova, director of the US National Science Foundation.

Professor Matthew Bailes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) said the world had entered the age of “multi-messenger astronomy”.

“Not only are we seeing the universe like we normally do, but we're feeling it with gravitational waves,” he said.

“This is a mega-science project that needs a global community in order to make it happen.”

The discovery and its implications are covered in a series of new scientific papers, published simultaneously in Physical Review Letters, Nature and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The discovery confirms another of Einstein's theories about the speed of light, but also gives a more accurate estimate of the size of the universe, advances the identification of the source of mysterious gamma ray bursts, and marks the first time the power of these stellar explosions to produce rare, heavy elements like gold has been recorded.

The event had hundreds of astronomers in Australia and around the world scrambling for their telescopes.

ANU’s Dr Christian Wolf awoke to the news and soon had the SkyMapper telescope pointing eastwards. As the Earth rotated, Dr Eric Howell was waiting with UWA’s Zadko telescope to gain crucial information about the colours and brightness of the fireball as it cooled and faded.

Meanwhile, in Sydney, a team led by A/Prof Tara Murphy was the first in the world to confirm the radio emission, from the gravitational wave counterpart initially detected by US colleagues, using CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array.

“When we got the alert we immediately put our team into action; it was perfect timing and this is intense, time-critical science,” said Dr Murphy.

Another scientific-first occurred just 1.7 seconds after the merger concluded, when a burst of gamma-rays hit the Earth.

“This instantly confirmed that merging neutron stars were responsible for the so-called short-duration gamma-ray bursts, solving a 50 year-old mystery”, explains A/Prof Andrew Melatos from the University of Melbourne.

“It also demonstrated that the speed of gravitational waves was the same as light to just a few parts in 10,000 trillion - verifying a central prediction of Einstein dating back to 1915”.

Further, the combination of the gravitational waves and its host galaxy redshift could be combined to measure the age of the Universe in a very fundamental way.

“The age was remarkably close to the best estimates”, says OzGrav’s Prof Peter Veitch (University of Adelaide).

The experts say that the detection of the faintest sound ever recorded has created one giant leap in our understanding of the universe.

“All of this paints an incredibly bright future for the field”, says OzGrav Deputy Director Prof David McClelland (ANU).

“This was the first time that any cosmic event was observed through both light it emitted and the gravitational ripples it caused in the fabric of space-time,” Dr Murphy said.

“Never before have we seen where in the universe gravitational waves came from; the subsequent avalanche of science was virtually unparalleled in modern astrophysics.”

LIGO’s paper is accessible here.