I am not a physicist, and dont have a good mental model of gravitational waves (or general relativity at all), so maybe someone can answer my laymans question: do these waves behave like ripples in water, so a single event generates multiple repetitive, concentric waves permeating through space? That would make me think that a single massive event would be easier to detect because it would leave many repeated &quot;echoes&quot;, ringing space for a long time after the actual event.<p>The article makes it sound like the detection of these waves is just a quick one-time blip though. I&#x27;d expect something as big as black holes merging to generate more longer lasting waves than just a quick blip. What is the period of these waves?