In part, that's because it's a new way of observing the Universe, like the early telescopes or microscopes.
-
Show this thread
-
But also because of how darn hard it was to do.
1 reply 1 retweet 4 likesShow this thread -
In 1998 I went to a talk by Kip Thorne where he said LIGO would likely need a strain sensitivity of "1 part in 10 to the 21" to see anything
1 reply 1 retweet 9 likesShow this thread -
That's an accuracy comparable to measuring the distance to the Sun to an accuracy of one atom.
1 reply 6 retweets 21 likesShow this thread -
At the time I simply laughed, and thought it would take centuries, or never happen.
2 replies 0 retweets 11 likesShow this thread -
Here's the abstract for the Nobel-winning paper. And there, in the second sentence, a "strain of 10^-21", bang on the money.pic.twitter.com/oej6Anewmw
2 replies 27 retweets 55 likesShow this thread -
Frankly, it's just utterly, utterly mindboggling that (a) we could predict gravitational waves; that
1 reply 1 retweet 7 likesShow this thread -
(b) people like Joseph Weber and Rai Weiss could even conceive of measuring them; and
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likesShow this thread -
(c) that people like Weiss, Thorne, Barish, Drever and their many, many collaborators could actually carry it out.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
Oh, and (d) that they persisted over half a century!
1 reply 0 retweets 8 likesShow this thread
So, hat's off to all of them, & congrats on an utterly remarkable achievement, one giving us a new window onto the Universe.
-
-
Oh - and here's looking forward to the next 50 years, as we improve the sensitivity of detection, and make many major discoveries!
1 reply 0 retweets 12 likesShow this threadThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.