Gravitational Waves Explained: Feynman's "Sticky Bead"

With yesterday's report from the LIGO collaboration indicating that they had observed a second black hole merger event, the 'net is once again abuzz with talk of gravitational waves, but some of you might still be struggling to understand precisely what a gravitational wave is, and what's so significant about it. Fortunately, way before anyone even dreamed of building a project as ambitious as LIGO or LISA, famous physicist Richard Feynman came up with an excellent way to explain gravitational w...