A plot showing detector responses to gravitational waves from the GW150914 event. On the left is the Hanford, Washington data. On the right is the data from the Livingston, Louisiana site.

Notices where this attachment appears

1. Robert McNees (mcnees@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 13:50:20 UTC Robert McNees

   Gravitational waves were first detected by LIGO #OTD in 2015, 100 years after they were predicted by Einstein.

   This discovery, announced the following February, marked the beginning of gravitational wave astronomy.

   The description of what was discovered and how it happened fits in a short post. It is simultaneously so amazing and so preposterous that some people who hear it will want to spend the rest of their lives understanding how it could be true and what we can learn from it: