I'm googling but it's all above my head - what's a gravitational wave, and how do they detect them, if anybody is willing to take a bit of time to explain to a turbo-layman? :D
There are many good videos on youtube that do a good job explaining what gravitational waves are and how we detect them. Many of these were made in response to the first detection, and they do a pretty good job explaining it in laymans terms. I personally really like veritasiums video here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iphcyNWFD10