Three spacecraft containing floating cubes of gold platinum will be sent into space to prove a famous theory devised by Albert Einstein, it has been confirmed.

Nasa and the European Space Agency have teamed up for the project, which will see the ships flying three million miles apart and firing laser beams at each other through space.

Scientists are planning to measure the changes in distance between the cubes, caused by the gravitational waves rippling out after contact with the beams.

As a result, they hope to finally be in a position to clarify the only part of Einstein's general relativity theory which has not yet been categorically proved.

"Gravitational waves are produced when massive objects like black holes or collapsed stars accelerate through space, perhaps because they [are] being pulled towards another object with greater gravitational pull like a massive black hole," Jim Hough, a professor at Glasgow University who was involving in drawing up the plans, told the Daily Telegraph.

"Unfortunately we haven't been able to detect them yet because they are very weak. However, the new experiments we are working on have great potential to allow detection."

Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and won the Nobel Prize in the subject in 1921, mainly for his discovery of the photoelectric effect.

Source:

Largest scientific instrument ever built to prove Einstein's theory of general relativity (09/05/10)

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